Italian-born Angelo Musco has a life journey as unique as his art; this guy is no average Joe. From birth he weighed in at a whopping 6.5 kilos after 11 months in the womb. Causing great complications during birth, Musco became trapped and turned blue and in a critical state he was rushed to hospital, leaving his mother in anguish as she thought him to be dead.
image: e-junkie.com
image: flickr.com
image: old.enciclopedia.com
Musco was paralyzed on his right side for the first years of his life. This injury, called Erb’s Palsy, is the tearing of neck, arm and shoulder nerves. With scheduled surgeries to fix the damage, Musco’s superstitious mother saw the disease as a bad omen and refrained from having any surgical work done on Musco and instead he spent the first 10 years of his life in therapy to strengthen his injured side of the body. The traumatic experience since birth is Musco’s main inspiration behind his art,
A body of work that is driven by the personal experience, a birth prolonged until the 11th month due to a hormonal dysfunction. A difficult pregnancy that has left both deep marks in the unconscious memories and in his physical body here becomes a narrative of suspended images- reflections of silent and surreal visions.
Brought up in Naples, his time was spent at school or helping out in his father’s grocery store doing deliveries. With his school situated near water, Musco would muse out of the window at the happenings on the river as he witnessed an array of interesting sights, such as the high speed boat chases of police and smugglers with black-market contraband. These activities very significant to Musco and his work. He later went on to study at the Academia Di Belle Arti and took an apartment in a very dangerous and historic part of the city; his new dwelling was next to the Napoli Sotteranea, a subterranean second city. The mysticism, history and legends of this old city destroyed by Mount Vesuvius were an ongoing fascination for the young artist.
image: rydye.thepop.com
image :talk.me
image: talk.me
A poor student/artist who worked part time jobs and couldn’t afford painting materials, Musco started experimenting with installations and mixed-media like fire, stones and the bodies of his fellow workers. An artist with such a rich and ‘troubled’ childhood created work that depicts all these times of his life and serves as rationale. With the human body is the main focus, he creates mosaics of nude bodies, woven and making it look like constructions that depict symbolic representation of eggs, nests amniotic fluid and other aspects of procreation. His work seems almost like great murals of naked bodies meshed together to form one symbolic meaning.
Words : Bianca Budricks
Sources: trendhunter.com, angelomusco.com, vimeo.com
images: trendhunter.com
1 comment
topha henny says:
May 4, 2012
Woah awesome!
Great article Bianca!