./../ is a video performance inspired by the theatre piece “Act Without Words II” 1956, by Samuel Beckett. "Habit is the ballast that chains the dog to his vomit. Breathing is habit. Life is habit. Or rather life is a succession of habits, since the individual is a succession of individuals…" With Act without word II we abandon the spoken word, preferring to rely on mimed performance that would communicate visually with the audience without the complication of words. ./../ offer different responses to how mankind might deal with the business of being alive in a random, if not hostile, environment. Chiara Bertin (1985), Italian-born visual artist, focused on mixed-media and art in public space. From a very young age she was exposed to fine arts, painting with her grandfather, an artist from Venice. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Multimedia Communication and a Master’s Degree in Graphic Design from the Academy of Fine Arts of Florence, and studied Contemporary Art in Venice. Her work has been exhibited in galleries and festivals throughout Europe and South-America. Recently she attended various Art-Residencies to develop her art-practice and cultural investigation in different social environments. “FAKE IS THE NEW REAL” Central to her practice is her love-hate relation with (mass-) media: “so powerful as a tool, and so dangerous as a weapon”. Nowadays ideas and images imposed by the press and commerce have become a reference and standard for a lot of people to measure their ‘beauty’ and ‘success’. "Is it possible to recognize the self’ in a mediated world’?” To reach a wide audience and simultaneously critique our contemporary society, she uses references from popular culture, mixed with autobiographical material. She makes videos, drawings, graphic projects and texts that touch socially engaged topics like: self-image, the spaces we inhabit (or not), ignorant and excessive consumerism, and over-sexualization. With her work she hopes to inspire people to imagine and accept personal and alternative definitions of beauty, bodies, habits and ways of life.
