All day I dream
Lina Tarmure
Julia Haumont (b. 1991, France) debuts in the local artistic context with works that have already proved her creative abilities in the French space, outlining a specific aesthetic, related to the claim of a lost childhood. The constituent elements of this exhibition come from the deeply personal structure of the artist’s memories, which she created together with her family in the first years of life.
Haumont creates her own playground, which she animates with ceramic and glass works, anthropomorphized children sized characters and objects inspired by the sea; her universe is completed by collages made of textile material, which outline the limits of this cosmos that is to be regained. The characters are encapsulated in a moment that the artist wants recovered, subject to the act of remembrance through a reliving. Except that she doesn’t relive it exactly, but rather leaves it to the subconscious, which, inspired by the study of family photos, generates components of the exhibition, from ceramic and glass objects, to fragments of pasteled porcelain and glass fragments, all invoking textures that support the deconstruction of her own childhood.
All day I dream is, first of all, an enclave of reality; an anthem of that distant, desaturated time of childhood, which we covet as adults and from which we want to escape when we are children. A time of search and discovery, of a blend between gentleness and violence, of joy and sorrow; but above all, a time when play governs any attempt at seriousness. Secondly, it is an awareness and, at the same time, an assumption of the loss of the battle with time, a conclusion of the contemplation on the mnemonic mechanisms of the human brain which at some point dilutes to complete extinction, becoming forgotten among the neuralgies generated by the inevitable passing of time.
The vast majority of the characters lack any physical individuality, bearing the obvious features of the author; however they can be differentiated by the details that Julia carefully enameled, resuming the leitmotifs of childhood, inevitable consequences of play: bruises on the knees, hands or shoulders, a tear in the corner of an eye, or different colors of socks. Thus, at first glance, the characters appear to be detached from their early life; however, a closer look shows how, in the bodies of a few years old girls, lie the attitudes of some teenagers, maybe even of young adults. Consequence of their ambiguous feelings, the children’s eyes are often directed to the ground, prisoners of their own thoughts, thus revealing their vulnerability, which will be understood only when they will ever grow up (if only), as the poet Nicolae Avram puts it in the volume The Orphans: “I realized late maybe too late / that I’ve always been a little weird creature / or rather a scared little mouse”.
In the absence of a disturbing factor, like an exponent of a life full of vicissitudes, boredom or daydreaming can be endlessly prolonged: “during the days when no one is looking for us / we cling to the walls like bats clinging to the ceiling of dark caves / we rip out the scabs / on our knees / and on our lips”. These moments represent the absolute duality of reality, the immersion in the dream state becoming the only purpose of an existence dictated by rummaging the corners of memory; like a dream within a dream, in which the characters dream Julia’s dream.
Only one of the few characters looking around them, an andogynous one (the only one who doesn’t wear the artist’s face) takes an interest in the context in which he finds himself, looking curiously in front of him, becoming a bridge between the present and the past, a guardian of this carefully made playground: “I realize that in fact / the blonde has been our amulet / everyday / the one that kept a watchful eye / the one who always got rid of the evil”. Therefore, we observe how a pseudo-organisation of the characters is taking shape, creating a sort of solidarity specific to a gang that allies against reality, and immerses in fantasies, daydreams and calculates its desires in anticipation of the future, avoiding strangers’ eyes.
The concept of play is taken over and integrated in all aspects of the genesis of the exhibition, whether we are talking about the multiple possibilities of interpreting the roles and positions of the protagonists, the exploration of the relationship between viewer and the work, the weaving and overlapping fragments of textile material, as well as joining and beading of porcelain fragments. The juggling between matter, shape and color is associated with the passage of time, necessary both to elaborate finished glass of ceramic objects, but also to create and deposit memories until they are forgotten, only to be found again and reprocessed. The total recall becomes an absolute but unrealistic goal; this inability represents the creative engine of the artist, that leads to this cathartic process, so necessary for the purification of toxic emotional states. Thus, a new context governed by frailty is created, in which the components are pieces of distant evocations, carefully attached to one another, not very tight but enough to not lose them and to not move too far away from the new playground of the adult Julia Haumont.