In Iuol never uolc alon Enzo Umbaca, being still aware of the previous perspectives, explores the metaphor of football from the point of view of emotions. The artist shows a complex reflection about relationships. The field turns into a dress to be worn – workshop dress or ceremony dress. It’s not so easy to wear it, it takes a lot of patience. That means playing the role assuming the responsibility for it. The dresses are hand –made in a grass-like cloth and they’re decorated as a football ground. In this case too the design gets wholly visible when two persons are wearing the dresses side by side. The ground becomes a figure of the space/stage of life itself and couple life looks like a game where characters play according to very important though unwritten rules. In the video giving the title to the exposition, the artist and his wife wear the ground-like clothes and cover the center of the scenes, both surrounded by each one’s relatives. All the group is engaged in a chorus and is disposed on a horizontal line. This layout imitates the solemn listening of the national anthem, thus adding one more reflection about the rituals of the game; moreover it gives the scene a two-dimensional feature, thus reminding the screen adaptation of reality as it shows in all TV works. In Iuol never uolk alon football carries out a reflection on both public and private dimension of relationships, going into a kind of non-stop trading. The game taking place in this video is more similar to a plain training among companions. The actors are singing the song of Gerry and the Pacemakers, first adopted as a hymn by Liverpool fans and then widespread among other groups of supporters. Enzo Umbaca wishes the relationship between husband and wife became an actual team game: the role of the chorus supports this awareness and marks its effects on the scene. Just like in the stadium, the assumption of personal responsibility is fed by the active participation of the public. In this way the relationships we’re used to consider as merely private can recover the strong power of every shared experience.

Emanuela De Cecco