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Her exhibit is one of the 41 installations of Monditalia in the Arsenale, ‘a scan across the Italian territory from South to North, and more extensively from Africa to the Alps and Europe.’

Szacka’s installation Effimero: Or the Postmodern Italian Condition tells the story of the series of ephemeral works of architecture constructed in Italy between 1977 and 1989. During the late 1970s and 1980s, as a response to the socio-political turmoil known as the anni di piombo (Years of Lead), a number of 'events' took place around ephemeral structures.

Theatre, performing arts and other forms of entertainment acted as catalysts of a new collective imagination which, coupled with the rediscovery of the architectural language of the baroque, gave rise to a new sense of the spectacle, culminating in the Pink Floyd's 1989 Venice concert, for which an entire artificial island was created off St Mark's.

Effimero: Or the Postmodern Italian Condition is both an archive of original drawings, photos and press cuttings of the structures that sustained these spectacles, and a sensitive and interpretative installation recalling an important moment in the Italian cultural scene.

For Effimero: Or the Postmodern Italian Condition, Szacka has worked with U67 - an architecture practice based in Oslo and founded by Italians Fabio Gigone and Angela Gigliotti, the Canadian graphic designer and photographer Valérie Paquette and the French architect Julien Sage-Thomas.

Szacka completed a PhD at The Bartlett in 2012, supervised by Professor Adrian Forty, with a thesis entitled ‘Exhibiting the Postmodern: Three Narratives for a History of the 1980 Venice Architecture Biennale’.

Monditalia exhibition, Arsenale di Venezia, Venice
7 June - November 23 2014

Image: Léa-Catherine Szacka, Effimero, 2014. Photo: Valérie Paquette