Platform boot made of found materials during an Artist in Residence at the house of Domenica Lana in the village of Viarigi in Piedmont, Italy, 2025.
Speyers: ‘It was really by coincidence that I ended up in Viarigi, Italy, together with artists, painters and photographers. The wonderful people are inspiring as is the charming place itself, with its abandoned houses. Lives once lived here, remembered or forgotten.
The wardrobes, clogs, pumps, tablecloths and picture frames tell a silent story. The fashionable lady before her 1970s Hollywood mirror, the dignified banker’s wife, the mother who cared for children and elders at the table, the mistress who kept her silence, the farmer’s wife with mud on her hem, the craftswoman weaving and stitching. The lover who never returned from the tower and Domenica Lana, the enigmatic muse who once stirred Viarigi. Here the idea arose to weave tangible traces of the past into something new, an object that carries memories within it. The scent of secrets. A tribute to the women who lived, worked, loved, disappeared, and were sometimes forgotten here. A woman’s boot, made from found fragments as a metaphor for the path they walked.
A pedestal of solid Italian olive wood, like an altar, bearing a found sandal. Reborn in leather. The lace of tablecloth and lingerie interwoven, familiar yet seductive. A hint of businesslike restraint embraced by a playful collar. The red lace that binds it all together ripples like the fiery locks of Domenica Lana, muse of Viarigi, sensual and sacred.’
© Wout Speyers.
