Marilisa Cosello
Esercizi Obbligatori (Mandatory exercises) (2016-18) is a performative, editorial photographic project by Marilisa Cosello in which the mechanisms of political, familial, social power are examined. The image in the collection, a woman ambiguously sitting on the lap of another, belongs to Act III of the series. In this episode of Act III, the family unit is manifested and illustrated. The family is the first type of society we are confronted with that contains all the elements of the larger one, the society which we live in.
MARILISA COSELLO worked as a photojournalist with major Italian periodicals before deciding to explore a different area. She began an artistic journey using photography that featured an effect of alienation. The iconic elements in her work are deconstruction and the concepts of limit, power and identity. She creates sets and performances exploring the link between inner conscience and community. Her projects include: Matrimonio (2016-2017), where darkness is the central character in a visual story that investigates the complexity of family relationships; Compleanno (2015-2016), a series that stages the diary of five different personalities living inside her – The Bride, The Lover, The Man, The Bourgeois Woman, The Children; Esercizi obbligatori (2017-2018), in which she explores the body and the physical and mental constraints that limit the individual’s freedom in society. *She was born in Salerno in 1978, and currently lives and works in Milan.