Bedbugs (cimex lectularius) use vacuum cleaners to travel, propagating from one office or apartment to another as they are swept up by domestic pieceworkers. Industrial vacuum cleaners, which promise the aseptic gift of cleanliness, are their Trojan horses: they become carriers of invisible Others, whose hosts we become. Even the bugs and viruses that infest our computers use Trojans to enter, grow and multiply, invading the fictitious and sacred space of privacy. Many compartmentalisations between inside and outside are illusions, and it is salubrious for them to flake, like our skin, inhabited by the dermal microbiota (mites, mycetes, bacteria and viruses), the commensal that helps us get rid of dead cells: the higher the biodiversity, the fewer the potential pathogens. [Excerpt from the text by Barbara Casavecchia]
RM, in their first solo exhibition in Italy, explores the mechanics of transmission, the secrecy of nocturnal intimacy, the “fictitious and sacred space of privacy.” Linguistic detours, stigma and shame are transformed into tools for claiming our history, bringing to the surface the inequalities that pervade contemporary society.
