Project Room #10 | Sophia Al-Maria. Mirror Cookie

On March 13, a new cycle of Project Room at the Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro opens, curated for 2019 by guest curator Cloé Perrone, who has selected three young international artists, Sophia Al-Maria, Caroline Mesquita, and Rebecca Ackroyd, artists who use sculpture within a multidisciplinary practice, thus expanding the very definition of it. Sculpture, not treated as a final result but as a process, becomes in their work a tool to create environments where visitors are compelled to engage with projects addressing socio-cultural phenomena such as misogyny, apocalypse, and national identity.

For the first event, the Qatari-American artist Sophia Al-Maria (1983, Tacoma, USA) brings to the Foundation Mirror Cookie (2018), an installation composed of a video – co-produced by Project Native Informant, London, and Anna Lena Films – projected onto a screen resting on a boudoir, immersed in a room surrounded by mirrors.

A fan of actress Bai Ling's blog since the early 2000s, Al-Maria was intrigued by a recurring theme in Bai’s posts: cookie. Sophia long thought that cookie was a person, perhaps a secret lover. In reality, Bai was writing affirmations of love and positivity addressed to herself. The installation Mirror Cookie collects a series of Bai’s cookies, reorganized into a disjointed monologue that recalls the “mirror technique,” a practice of boosting self-esteem. A passionate improvisation delivered to the camera, as if the “fourth wall” to break was one’s own reflection.