Claudio La Mattina
Installation
BaseCamp PopUp / Courtyard
Istituto Sant’Eugenio
Via al Sasso 1, Locarno
For BaseCamp, as part of the Locarno Film Festival 2025, Claudio La Mattina presents Maestra, an immersive and participatory installation that transforms the space into a place of play and discovery. For a limited time, the courtyard of the Istituto St. Eugenio will become a sculptural landscape made of wood and fabric, a living environment that invites visitors to explore and interact freely with the sculptures.
In this setting, functionality and imagination intertwine. The forms, designed to stimulate movement and connection, encourage the audience to experience a familiar space with fresh eyes, breaking the rhythm of everyday life to offer a moment of pause, play, and creative engagement.
In this project, La Mattina invites the public to let their guard down and return to a childlike state of play, rediscovering a shared creativity that belongs to each of us. The work suggests that imagination can protect, connect, and even heal. Participants become co-authors, encouraged to re-inhabit their own bodies, move in unfamiliar ways, and relate to one another beyond social conventions.
With Maestra, Claudio La Mattina explores imagination as a form of resistance and renewal. The work seeks to bring the value of human connection, play, and sharing back to the forefront, transforming public space into a place where one can imagine and build authentic connections.
Imagination, by its nature, transcends race, age, and social class. It lives within all of us, intact and universal. It is a force capable of generating alternative narratives, responding to crises, precariousness, and exclusion with new possible worlds. In Maestra, La Mattina creates not just an installation, but a call to share, dream, and remember that deeply human and safe space we all carry within us.
The project is anchored around the reflections of philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre in L’Imaginaire, where imagination is seen not just as a way to “see” what is not there, but as an active force of consciousness. A consciousness that is capable of saying “no” to reality and to transform or even transcend it. For Sartre, this creative capacity is the ultimate proof of our freedom: we are not entirely bound by what we see or experience but can also create alternatives.
Maestra demonstrates how imagination, even in everyday life, can be a tool for liberation, allowing us to build new worlds beyond the limits of material reality. The entire experience will be documented in a video capturing spontaneous interactions such as moments of laughter, hesitation, surprise, and rediscovery, highlighting human connection and the power of play in public space.
Curated by Refusés
Text by Refusés
The artwork was produced locally, thanks to the collaboration with Dario Aguet (Product & Industrial Designer – Mendrisio, CH). Educated in Product and Industrial Design at ECAL (École cantonale d'art de Lausanne) and holding a Master’s degree in Contemporary Design from Aalto University, with a specialization in wood design. Aguet focuses his practice on the intersection of sustainability and functional design, with particular attention to disassembly, repairability, and product life cycles. Currently based in Mendrisio, he develops projects ranging from objects to installations, sound, and research, combining technical precision with a critical reflection on design.
Claudio La Mattina
Installation
BaseCamp PopUp / Courtyard
Istituto Sant’Eugenio
Via al Sasso 1, Locarno
For BaseCamp, as part of the Locarno Film Festival 2025, Claudio La Mattina presents Maestra, an immersive and participatory installation that transforms the space into a place of play and discovery. For a limited time, the courtyard of the Istituto St. Eugenio will become a sculptural landscape made of wood and fabric, a living environment that invites visitors to explore and interact freely with the sculptures.
In this setting, functionality and imagination intertwine. The forms, designed to stimulate movement and connection, encourage the audience to experience a familiar space with fresh eyes, breaking the rhythm of everyday life to offer a moment of pause, play, and creative engagement.
In this project, La Mattina invites the public to let their guard down and return to a childlike state of play, rediscovering a shared creativity that belongs to each of us. The work suggests that imagination can protect, connect, and even heal. Participants become co-authors, encouraged to re-inhabit their own bodies, move in unfamiliar ways, and relate to one another beyond social conventions.
With Maestra, Claudio La Mattina explores imagination as a form of resistance and renewal. The work seeks to bring the value of human connection, play, and sharing back to the forefront, transforming public space into a place where one can imagine and build authentic connections.
Imagination, by its nature, transcends race, age, and social class. It lives within all of us, intact and universal. It is a force capable of generating alternative narratives, responding to crises, precariousness, and exclusion with new possible worlds. In Maestra, La Mattina creates not just an installation, but a call to share, dream, and remember that deeply human and safe space we all carry within us.
The project is anchored around the reflections of philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre in L’Imaginaire, where imagination is seen not just as a way to “see” what is not there, but as an active force of consciousness. A consciousness that is capable of saying “no” to reality and to transform or even transcend it. For Sartre, this creative capacity is the ultimate proof of our freedom: we are not entirely bound by what we see or experience but can also create alternatives.
Maestra demonstrates how imagination, even in everyday life, can be a tool for liberation, allowing us to build new worlds beyond the limits of material reality. The entire experience will be documented in a video capturing spontaneous interactions such as moments of laughter, hesitation, surprise, and rediscovery, highlighting human connection and the power of play in public space.
Curated by Refusés
Text by Refusés
The artwork was produced locally, thanks to the collaboration with Dario Aguet (Product & Industrial Designer – Mendrisio, CH). Educated in Product and Industrial Design at ECAL (École cantonale d'art de Lausanne) and holding a Master’s degree in Contemporary Design from Aalto University, with a specialization in wood design. Aguet focuses his practice on the intersection of sustainability and functional design, with particular attention to disassembly, repairability, and product life cycles. Currently based in Mendrisio, he develops projects ranging from objects to installations, sound, and research, combining technical precision with a critical reflection on design.