VIRGINIA

VIRGINIA is a fabric architecture that embodies a stylised version of the ‘little house’ we imagine as children, a rudimentary, dreamlike form reminiscent of the naïve drawings of a bygone era. A simple membrane in pop colours made up of matter, air and light that takes shape from the outside of the façade of the main building of the Bridderhaus in rue Léon Metz, thanks to a generator installed on the other side of the window. In this way, artist Alfredo Barsuglia gives shape to an improbable aerial living space. It's an approach that undoubtedly recalls the spirit of twentieth-century utopian architecture and the effervescence of the artistic installations of the 1960s and 1970s, with their craze for inflatables.

Through the image of this house floating in the wind and taking its own breaths, VIRGINIA echoes the phenomenon of economic and demographic overdevelopment in the city of Bologna. In an almost surreal gesture, the artist evokes the dwellings that have been created between two floors of the same building, in response to the pressing demand for housing, which particularly affects students.

Is it still possible to imagine alternative ways of occupying urban space and responding to these social dysfunctions? What if we could reverse the trend of contemporary crises, particularly the housing crisis, by once again relying on bold, temporary and mobile visions?

The work VIRGINIA is the result of a co-production between NOS Visual Arts Production and the Bridderhaus at the end of a double residency programme led by the artist in 2024 in Bologna (IT) - thanks to the collaboration with Sandra Natali Artist Residency - and in Esch-sur-Alzette (LU). The title is a reference to the British novelist Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), author of the famous 1929 book A Room of One's Own.

Alfredo Barsuglia (b. 1980, Graz) lives and works in Vienna, Austria.

VIRGINIA (2025)
Polyester, wood, generator, light
185 x 113 x 180 cm