…each finished work is another solved problem, the more experience gained, the more challenging the next work will be.”
Piloni likes to show bodies that couldn’t exist. Most are somehow manipulated or discombobulated, even when she breaks off to tackle the form of another animal entirely or create a false human-like interior of fruit. Yet, in crafting each figure in absorbing precision, a tension arises. It’s a pursuit that offers Piloni the chance to discuss eroticism, sexuality, identity, alienation, and other societal concepts. Even a perfectly poised “Ballerina,” upon further inspection, is a collection of boxed body parts, assembled just right for its performance. In each angle, the detached limbs and costume become both chilling and engrossing.
“When producing a sculpture, I have to guarantee that before anything else, the observer perceives that it is in space,” Piloni says. “Afterwards, I have to make the observer walk in the sculpture’s direction and around it. The longer I can capture the observer, the bigger the chances that my work will communicate to him. It is a survival struggle in a disproportionate disadvantage because she ‘stays,’ is static, placid, inanimate, dumb, and in principle doesn’t serve any purpose.”
The artist has worked in photography and video since 2011, and she does enjoy using her own sculptures as components of that work. But the trick of these formats is that Piloni can offer only what she wants the audience to see, stripping away the freedom of the viewer. And unlike the three-dimensional aspect of being in the presence of sculpture, there is no shared space between viewer and the photographic or cinematic art. Now, every angle isn’t primed for scrutiny. The artist moves between these mediums with ease, gaining new powers while ceding others in the process.
“Today when I look at my trajectory, I realize that regardless of the choices I made in the past, the artistic development process is very slow,” Piloni says. “It has to be this way. Even if the production is intense and incessant, each finished work is another solved problem. The more experience gained, the more challenging the next work will be and the more questions will arise because art never told me, ‘This is the answer.’ It only tells me, ‘This is the question.’”
Piloni says that the biggest lesson she’s learned in art was “to belong,” referring to the idea of knowing that artists (or, as she says, “weirdos like me”) have a place in the world. “I also learned to be less self-centered, which seems to be the nature of the artist class,” Piloni says. “I had the opportunity to interact with—get to know, to be helped by, and to help—many wonderful people that have contributed to my idea of what the world is, and that transpires in my work.*
This article originally appeared in Hi-Fructose issue 42 which is sold out. Get our latest issue by subscribing to Hi-Fructose here.
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