2025
BUSINESS AS USUAL
FRAGMENT GALLERY x Gallery Morfi
BUSINESS AS USUAL
Solo show
2025
Fragment Gallery (NY), Gallery Morfi space, Limassol, Cyprus
The exhibition “Business as Usual” continues the artist's recent project “Notes on the Apocalypse,” exploring how inconspicuous the end of the world can appear to those who have mastered the art of overlooking wars, injustice, and destruction. Another issue raised in these works is the lack of time to process the news, climate change, or late-stage capitalism among those engaged in cheap labor.
A new motif in Dagnini’s work, central to this solo show “Business as Usual,” is the escalating dependency on AI. In an attempt to save ourselves time, we outsource our thought processes while simultaneously helping megacorporations exploit natural resources and harvest our personal data. For the sake of reducing effort, we rely on randomness — conclusions drawn from piles of unverified facts. Constant dialogue with machines becomes not just a tool (and at times no better than Microsoft’s Clippy) but also a means of overcoming loneliness by talking to simulation.
Working with tapestry and hand embroidery has already become a signature technique in Dagnini’s practice. In “Business as Usual,” she creates objects that are both utilitarian and decorative. Embroidered tapestry becomes part of practical objects intended for everyday use — items of a privileged household: a chaise longue for unbothered leisure, a room divider for ignoring unpleasant realities, pillows for the comfortable sleep of reason, and so on. The gallery walls are partially covered with wallpaper depicting distorted fragments of disaster sites, creating a disturbing backdrop for the objects: wildfires, sizzling lava, explosions, smoke. The exhibition also includes tapestries in their more traditional form as decorative wall hangings. The scale of works varies from miniature embroideries to large-scale pieces with meticulously executed details.
All objects are made using found antique tapestries. By adding hand-embroidered text to their surfaces, the artist infers new meanings. Antiques become physical memes through the inclusion of words stitched onto them. The principle is the same as in the creation of digital memes: altering the meaning of an image by overlaying text. Obsession with the idea of the end of the world has recurred throughout history in our collective consciousness. Technological progress that pushes us closer to that end is hardly new either, especially in times of war and humanitarian crisis. Even if a machine uprising is not imminent, humanity will always invent another self-destructive mechanism.
Solo show
2025
Fragment Gallery (NY), Gallery Morfi space, Limassol, Cyprus
The exhibition “Business as Usual” continues the artist's recent project “Notes on the Apocalypse,” exploring how inconspicuous the end of the world can appear to those who have mastered the art of overlooking wars, injustice, and destruction. Another issue raised in these works is the lack of time to process the news, climate change, or late-stage capitalism among those engaged in cheap labor.
A new motif in Dagnini’s work, central to this solo show “Business as Usual,” is the escalating dependency on AI. In an attempt to save ourselves time, we outsource our thought processes while simultaneously helping megacorporations exploit natural resources and harvest our personal data. For the sake of reducing effort, we rely on randomness — conclusions drawn from piles of unverified facts. Constant dialogue with machines becomes not just a tool (and at times no better than Microsoft’s Clippy) but also a means of overcoming loneliness by talking to simulation.
Working with tapestry and hand embroidery has already become a signature technique in Dagnini’s practice. In “Business as Usual,” she creates objects that are both utilitarian and decorative. Embroidered tapestry becomes part of practical objects intended for everyday use — items of a privileged household: a chaise longue for unbothered leisure, a room divider for ignoring unpleasant realities, pillows for the comfortable sleep of reason, and so on. The gallery walls are partially covered with wallpaper depicting distorted fragments of disaster sites, creating a disturbing backdrop for the objects: wildfires, sizzling lava, explosions, smoke. The exhibition also includes tapestries in their more traditional form as decorative wall hangings. The scale of works varies from miniature embroideries to large-scale pieces with meticulously executed details.
All objects are made using found antique tapestries. By adding hand-embroidered text to their surfaces, the artist infers new meanings. Antiques become physical memes through the inclusion of words stitched onto them. The principle is the same as in the creation of digital memes: altering the meaning of an image by overlaying text. Obsession with the idea of the end of the world has recurred throughout history in our collective consciousness. Technological progress that pushes us closer to that end is hardly new either, especially in times of war and humanitarian crisis. Even if a machine uprising is not imminent, humanity will always invent another self-destructive mechanism.
