14-18/12/2020
Curated by Juan Zapater.
Fundación BilbaoArte, Bilbao, Basque country.
The project Lo que queda de ti (What's left of you) is an investigation of the life of strangers that focuses on a simple action of ordinary life, that of shopping. The act of “buying something” is as banal as its only trace, the receipt, which is often thrown away shortly after being issued. However, receipts contain fragments of time written on paper that shall not go wasted.
From 17 July to 25 November 2020, the artist travelled to various cities in the Basque Country and northern Spain (Bilbao, Portugalete, Vitoria-Gasteiz, San Sebastián, Santander, Valladolid, Pamplona, Zaragoza, Logroño, Basauri, Plentzia, Bermeo, Getxo, Guernica, Gijón) looking for receipts left around by strangers. Fascinated by the idea of reliving a moment and a memory that does not belong to her, Gurgone tries to imagine the story behind each receipt she collects; at the same time, to relive the moment, she had to include it in her own life.
The project develops through 50 performative actions in which the artist repeated the same expenses imprinted on the receipts she collected, in the same shop where the receipt was issued. For 6 months she let strangers manage her life, letting them choose foods and items (such as perfumes, shopping lists, clothes) to include in her daily life. The performance connects two different lives, which, for a moment, cease to be unknown to each other. Although she tries to buy the same exact items and pay the same amount of money, the project demonstrates the impossibility of duplicating a memory and reliving the same moment twice. Memories are filtered by time (take discounted items, unexpected items, terminated items or those who are no longer available) and the personality of those who live it.
The exhibition documents the replication of 50 Basque and Spanish receipts. On a large table are all the catalogued expenses, some of the items purchased and a ticket archive with the date, time and place where the receipt was found. One screen shows the artist making the purchases and how the various items became part of her life, while a second screen traces the distance between the place where the receipt was found and the shop from which it was issued on Google maps.
The artist then chose to give more detail on the reproduction of four purchases, through four installations containing symbolic objects, photos, narrations and the story of some unexpected events.
