mario tomè/”i bareloi” in “chiavi di accesso”

“i bareloi”
by mario tomè
etnographic museum “al pojat” of zoppé di cadore

first stage of the “chiavi di accesso“ project,
opening on December the 20th 2014, 11 AM

Mario Tomè (Agordo, 1980), has been cultivating, in art and passion, the relationship with his own territory, the dolomitic one. To him, there is no distance, but coincidence, between being an inhabitant of these places, and being an artist: his personal sensibility has him putting into play the meaning of what he does and knows in the experience of his life.

Starting from 2009, he’s concerned himself with several aspects typical of the mountain culture in various occasions, through a series of meaningful pieces, exploring in particular themes linked to mountaineering, climbing, bivouacs, and the relationship between humans and their territories.
He works mostly with photography, video, and installation.

Ever since this past Spring, Tomè has been living in Piar, in the Municipality of La Valle Agordina. Here, engulfed by the woods, he’s worked on the restoration of the scofa, the old family barn built in 1827 by al nane Barelon (Eng.:the old Barelon).
Barelon is the nickname given in the valley to the paternal lineage of the artist.
The scofa, unused for years, was at that point in complete shambles. It had to be saved. First, he demolished the old bulk. Then, after he obtained the necessary wood, he re-built it from scratch, using the traditional building system. For some months, the scofa became the construction-site-turned-bivouac of the artist-carpenter, who has often inhabited it, armed only with a sleeping bag and a frontal torch. The scofa is back on its feet, upright: starting from next summer, it is going to be housing a few artists-in-Residency, who are also going to live and investigate this environment.

When Tomè was invited to think of an exhibit for the etnographic Museums of Zoppè, the idea was, from the very beginning, to bring the scofa in the Pojat, putting those two elements, as well as the territories to which they are related, in direct contact.

During the summer, he has walked the thirty-kilometre distance between Piar and Zoppè. And crossing this pace physically, passing through all of its three regions (agordino, zoldano, cadorino), means linking them. Because, as different as they may be, they are part of the same territory, one that the artist wanted to capture in a single image. They are one in the mountain.

[Show as slideshow]

Remaking the scofa, means inhabiting the territory, knowing its customs and practices, the names of the places, the working tools: and refuting the extinction of memory and tradition.

In Tomè’s own words: “We’ve pushed ourselves too far in the race of progress. We’ve gotten rid of the past as if it were a cumbersome and inert heirloom, when the past is a slow journey of accumulation, in wisdom and knowledge, that today we realise we need to recover, because that unstoppable trajectory begins to show all of its fallacies.”.

Tomè has found the old nails, inside the display cases of the Pojat of Zoppè. He’s found others while he demolished the scofa: these nails, taken in Piar, are now in the Museum. On them have been stamped some phrases that tell stories, stories of the men and women of these lands. “They are words that aren’t used anymore, lost sayings of the Agordo, Zoldano and Cadore dialects, that is to say of the territories that I’ve crossed by foot from the barn in Zoppè di Cadore, location of the exhibit. I would like my work to prove useful in the effort of putting this lost vocabulary into circulation once again. I’ve thought of the nails as ideal supports, because they weld, they keep things together. That is what I’d want to happen between past and present: a strenghtening of a sacred and necessary bond between what we are, and what we have been.”

The nails are assembled, together with the wood of Piar, to create a new structure, made with old things: because tradition has to be renewed, always, to avoid it getting lost. The Addio alle Baite by Zas Fris (Eng.: Goodbye to the Lodges) is one of the central texts, together the the area’s dialects’ dictionaries, which were used by Tomè for this piece.

A picture of the nane Barelon is hung beside the installation of nails and wood. The grandfather, maker of the scofa, is armed with a scynthe. In a way, he looks like he’s declaring to be ready to defend his own world. And that the fundamental defence of tradition can, in the gravest of cases, be in need of a revolution. The cote (Eng.: pig) is ready for the blade.

Inside the structure of the Pojat, a series of slides is projected: they are shots taken by the artist, while he demolished and rebuilt, while he crossed the woods on the way to Zoppè. The first two shots were taken in 1986: in them Tomè, at the age of six, ogles the scofa of Piar, already looking. Putting these images inside the Pojat, means, once again, linking Tomà’s personal experience with the most characterizing element of this Museum: looking at the single places as the human home: it’s the land, the human home.

Outside the Museum, another object is resting against the stone fountain. A small wooden canalization, modeled in Piar, channels the water outside. The path of the water will be taken up in the summer, again, to flow into the earth, uniting it.

Gianluca D’Incà Levis, december 2014