The work entitled Pump Room, in the room on the right hand side, comments
on the peculiar existence of Venice, a city built on the lagoons of the sea,
still surviving, holding out against submersion. There are twelve kneeling human
figures - men and women - wearing pyjamas and a diver's helmet, who are drinking
out of a sacrificial chalice. An entirely unrealistic situation in itself, because
drinking under the water, especially in a diver's helmet, is impossible; on the
other hand, the appearance of these figures in front of the public in night-clothes
is a dramatic situation of vulnerability. Pump Room is a representation
of paradoxes and notional allegories, it is a depiction of wakefulness and dream,
of vulnerability and immunity, it is the state of being defenceless against the
elements, and of being dependent on the water and on the air, and it also embodies
the duality of being thrown in the middle of a society and a sense of alienation
at the same time - this work is based on the complexity of all these.
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