DESERTO GIALLO | OHII KATYA

VOLTO (wearable sculpture), 2022, burned sugar, resin, plastic, elastic band, PH Oleksandr Radomskyi

IZBA (installation), 2022, burned sugar, resin, tree branches, cork, metal wire, smoke machine, PH Oleksandr Radomskyi

DESERTO GIALLO, 2022

COLLABORATIVE PROJECT BETWEEN

OHII KATYA,

ARCHIVIO FUTURO AND LEONARDO PARATA

Music video and performance by the band Archivio Futuro,

directed by Leonardo Parata,

including wearable sculptures and installation by Ohii Katya.

Click here to listen to see the video

INSTALLATION AND MASKS

OHII KATYA

DIRECTED BY

LEONARDO PARATA

WRITTEN BY

DANILO MENNA, LEONARDO PARATA

PHOTOGRAPHY

TOMMASO CASSINIS, TOMMASO SALAMINA

ASSISTANT ON SET

CHIARA PASCOLINI

SPESIAL THANKS TO:

BOOGIE STUDIO

MANI LORENA TIBERI

ELIZABETTA D'ARPE

SERENA SALERNO

OLEKSANDR RADOMSKYI

SIMONE BRILLARELLI

ELETTRA CAPUANO

The poem in the subtitles is by Rainer Maria Rilke

BALIA (performance backstage), shoot during Ohii Katya’s solo show MORULA, 2022, PH Patrizio Gentile

Backstage photography by Serena Salerno

Deserto Giallo (music video), directed by Leonardo Parata

Backstage photography by Serena Salerno

In the video, directed by Leonardo Parat, the characters are in a kind of self-contained space of dreams, the world of the subconscious and spiritual, where we become observers of a series of actions, a kind of ritual that goes in a circle, devoid of the usual logic of everyday life and incomprehensible to us.

The characters do not have human faces, they are anonymous by means of masks made by the artist Ohii Katya specially for the Archivio Futuro music band.

Drawing from the iconic Venetian masks, originally worn by the common folks during the Carnival of Venice for ease of anonymity, my work depicts surreal citizens, characters who inhabit the space of dreams. These assumed identities weave together an imagined reality with slight hints of illogical and absurd nightmares underpinned by an uncanny, seductive quality.

Masks are constantly transforming due to the usage of burned sugar that never stops melting and pouring through the little cracks in the resin top layer.

The idea of using Venetian mask aesthetic originally came from the group members Lorenzo and Danilo. VENETIAN DEVIL mask was the starting point, because Lorenzo was already performing in the industrial version of it and felt very comfortable and natural within a devil character, a sort of trickster.

From the inside of this spiritual world we see

a construction , made from organic materials such as branches, tree bark, and burnt sugar.

This installation by Ohii Katya personifies the reverse side of the gate between the worlds, the exit from the other, spiritual world rather than the entrance.

This gate is a sort-of Rubicon between reality and subconscious.

At the very end of the video performance for which this installation was created, this gate was destroyed, sealing its inhabitants inside, cutting them off from reality.