Nicola Costantino

The epicenter of this installation is a movie trailer for a nonexisting film; here we see Nicola playing the leading role; she is also the model for the entire photographic production that illustrates the billboards. In the trailer, Nicola reads the positive results of her pregnancy test, and while her child grows in her belly during the gestation period, the artist creates a doll that is identical to herself, her exact duplicate. The “artefacta”, as Costantino calls her double, accompanies her during the delivery of the baby, and in other daily activities once the child is born. What used to be a friendship soon becomes a threat; something is going wrong and the “artefacta” ends up being flung down the stairs. This “movie trailer” can be seen in a “vehicle trailer”, one that has become a mini-movie theater. The other trailers contain scenes that may be compared to life chapters: a sculpture workshop, a sewing workshop and a baby’s room; the last trailer has a staircase leading to a glass roof from where the total destruction of the doll may be observed. The double fulfills the secret wish of remaining forever in an ideal state, like a female Dorian Gray that never ages. But the destruction of the doll at the hands of its own creator seems to convey the warning that it is better to accept one’s own condition, how ever imperfect it may be.