✧✧✧✧✧ ONGOING  PROJECTS ✧✧✧✧✧                         Telenovela and Social Transformation                                                                                                                            Music collaborations with WANNABE, Rayo, Imaabs, Joe Campbell and Gabriel Gassi                            
 CARLA GARLASCHI (aka ✧Princess Prada
hyper-latinpop artist girlfriend-experience daddy Y2K flow narrative hybrid auto-fiction gossip

  InstallatioN    VideO  
MusiC   WritingS    PresS   MemeS   BiO   ContacT 

Mark
HOW TO BE SOMEONE (2012)
Galleri Mejan
Royal Institute of Art Stockholm
Master in Fine Arts, Degree show


Ph: Petter Lehto.
HOW TO BE SOMEONE
- Extract, Spring Show’s Program (2012)
Royal Institute of Art Stockholm

In Carla Garlaschi’s work, phrases and symbols are repeated tautologically, which releases them from their fixings and creates a number of sliding signifiers. In HOW TO BE SOMEONE this is done with among other things a banner, a video and a book withthe same title as thepiece.

The banner, which is kept in motion with the help of a fan, clarifies the unstitching of the seams of the signs. Symbols from various Latin American coats of arms are united around a version of Maslow’s needs pyramid, with the title of the work at the top, and form the work’s own coat of arms. It is a humorous coup de palace that sets the mummified symbols in motion and wrests them out of the hands of the militarism and the ceremony they are associated with. At the same time, the hierarchy of needs in the heraldic center of the banner seems to point out what these states have forgotten.

The video is recorded in Garlaschi’s native country Chile, and in loosely put together scenes she herself appears as a celebrity who shares her wisdom in exclusive environments. The graphics are borrowed from Chilean TV, her voice is dubbed, and the Spanish subtitles do not express exactly what is said. But, really, nothing is said. When the video adjusts the form of the TV media, it is clear that the celebrity mostly speaks in order to be somebody, that is, stay in the picture.

The book HOW TO BE SOMEONE: A Formula to Conquer the World is at the same time an absurd and realistic guide to success, which by way of the narrator’s experiences presents a method for how we should succeed. When we have finished reading, we see that the whole work is a projection of it. Simultaneously, the meaning of “how to be someone” has expanded, and the context has become clearer. Under the sutures, there is a wound that is also a stage. On this stage we are forced to live with the ambivalence of mourning and accepting things as they are, that is, if we want to be someone.


After Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, Carla Garlaschi (2012).