Date 2021 Height (cm) 14 Length (cm) 9 Depth (cm) 2 Weight (g) 300 Materials and Techniques Murano glass eyes made by lamp, cut and burnt paper, paint, resin. Subject/Description Regarding the theme proposed in the creation of the notebook "What comes first?" by Simon Njami, the artist Cosima Montavoci does not find that the only solution is the answer to these existential questions. The eyes have many symbologies but are associated here with the subjective response of Sartre and Camus: to save one's own country or mother? In no case will the answer be correct or wrong, but it will lead instead to discovering the difference between looking inside or outside oneself and one's individual interests.
The notebook houses 34 eyes in Murano glass, made by the artist, all different but all brown. The paper left white, contrary to what normally happens, is perforated and burned, as if the incandescent glass had touched it, to let open; as you flip through the pages, more and more eyes staring at the person holding the notebook. All the questions proposed by the theme bounce back to the observer.
Archival Fund AtWork Archive number 442 Bibliography Cosima Montavoci is a Venetian artist who repatriated to Venice after a decade in Holland, where she graduated from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie. Her work is very often organic and she masters different materials, techniques and media to express herself. Her work is about great existential themes humans have explored over the years, such as mortality, creation, memory, classical themes and cultural aspects of society, or forgotten little things people don't want to discuss.
Cosima defines them as "human traces" or "honest fossils".
His work's main feature is to help accept complex topics through an ironic layer that accompanies each of his works.
She believes that her own hands help her to think, so a very noticeable feature of her works of art is the manual component that constitutes them.
Personal data Venice, Italy 1998