Matheus Rocha Pitta

You can’t distinguish hunger from desire, says Matheus Rocha Pitta, as he packs another work in a banana box. The boxes are part of the presentation, framing a ceramic piece accompanied by the newspaper clipping that inspired it. A ceramic impression of a plastic bag, after a photo of someone holding up a bag of food for refugees travelling to the US. A cubist mask with orange lustre, after a picture of a participant in Ivrea’s orange-throwing Festival. Other masks carry patterns of cardboard, parallel lines sensually caressing, shaping the face, and then there are the tongues. Protruding, licking, yearning, hungry for experience, for some piece of the world. Covered with newspaper clippings, the tongues become protests too, a sign of disease, of rage and powerlessness amidst the oppression, exploitation, madness we ingest. They appear on votive-like tiles: offerings to a god in gratitude for healing – or desperately seeking divine intervention.