Homes.
David Clegg, London, 2002

During the plague years in England a harsh system of quarantine was applied. Once a member of a household was seen to have the first signs of illness the doors were chained shut and a cross or mark was painted outside to warn of infection. Only two groups of people were allowed to enter, the matrons, who tended the sick (and were well paid for it), and me wardens who minded the dead. The plaque wardens have become familiar images, the stuff of childhood nightmares. Dressed in floor length, heavy leather robes, hooded with beak like masks filled with flowers to disguise the smell of corruption with the perfume of summer meadows.

Maria Novella's installation glorifies a dark and bunker like space beneath the Museum of Contemporary Art "Luigi Pecci". Here five 'homes' nestle in a limbo like stillness between collapse and construction. They hint at bodies and hives or cybernetic landscapes where crystal Frankenstein's lurk....It's unclear if the web of technology which spans the room lights a scene of forensic enquiry or attempts at the reanimation of raw matter beneath. Perhaps the homes are incubators?...There is certainly something here that disturbs and reassures in equal measure.....A scent of cut grass suggests idyllic childhood summers... Dangerously white razor blade pillows imply lethal levels of comfort....

Each home emits a different tone that permeates the room. This is a spatially changing, visceral mass of sound, pushing at the perimeters of the dark enclosure to escape virus like under the door. The sound is an infection. Enveloping and liquid. Invasive and unnoticed. The homes like five mythical sirens luring the unwary with their beauty...White as amphetamine, salt trails mark the visitor and journey away to other homes.