Her project draws inspiration from an archive of about 3,500 plates belonging to the School of Applied Drawing for Arts and Industries, an all-male institute that was active in the small town of Sutrio from the end of the nineteenth century until 1966. The mostly technical drawings are studies for woodworking, a craft for which Sutrio is renowned. Many of the students later became carpenters. Sabrina Melis has reproduced these archival drawings, with their angular shapes, on a larger scale. Her work is fluid and dynamic: the arrangement of the objects can vary, and each piece is intended to be a performer who acts out different situations, whether invented or real. Between the wooden slots is a monitor that transmits image reproductions of some of the environments. These spaces were virtually reconstructed via descriptions in the themes, such as those titled ‘Come arrederei la mia cameretta’ (How I would furnish my room). The installation is activated automatically every evening at 7 and shuts off at 9pm, the time when lessons were held at the drawing school.

Sabrina Melis (Milan, 1986) is an Italian artist and designer. Thematically, her work focuses on human habitation, interweaving scientific and artistic research. An analysis of uses, habits, human passage through physical or virtual spaces, and their purpose is the artist’s starting point for exploring this universal movement. In her work, fiction is a tool used to combine facts and hard information with hypotheses of reality through the use of different media. The artist has a particular interest in video and installation.