paola pivi on why we can no longer play
paola pivi on why we once looked to children for freedom
When I was young(er) people said ‘you need to keep alive the child in you.’ Last century there was a consciousness of the effect of society on the person and the value of play. Adults would look at children and value something precious that children had. When an adult retained that aspect in their life and still functioned as an adult, the other adults admired it. For years I made artworks that were defined as playful by others, and they asked me about play. For me, the aspect they called play was normal and I was puzzled about what I should answer.
I definitely approach my life and the world with curiosity and humbleness, approaching everything like a direct encounter between an informed me and the spectacle in front of me, expecting it to be great. Isn’t that play? But today cards of society have shifted. Suddenly play is no longer sought. Today we cannot play. All we type and say is recorded and can be used against us. Even political opinions are scary to have. All could be reused against us. For example at the border, between countries. Play is gone. Then we really see with clarity the preciousness of play: test something to see what happens, to try and see what you feel, what they feel, what you think, what they think. Play is, therefore, an intellectual exploration based on freedom. So far from our daily life. In my opinion, it seems that today children are not enviable for any reason. Either we are uninterested in their free games because sadly those are a rare possibility for us or, maybe, regardless of all the limitations imposed still today, somehow we did manage to get a certain degree of freedom from society rules, which are not shaping anymore directly what we should study, practice, or be, and therefore the play of children is not something we instantly feel the longing for when we see it, like we used to feel in the last century. Or maybe we are just less conscious of society’s impositions and are therefore apathetic to the freedom of children.
Paola Pivi, It’s not my job, it’s your job, [mac] Marseille (Musée d’art contemporain Installation view Photograph by Hugo Glendinning Courtesy of the Artist and Perrotin
when architecture became a playground
As a child I played wildly (meaning a lot). My family lived in Gallarate in Ronchi; there was and there still is a huge white condominium designed by a good architect who played with shapes and volumes. There was an even larger fenced yard, all with beautiful grass with small white flowers and a lot of clover. Finding the four-leaf clovers was easy enough that we scanned the green for half hours every day and were successful and felt lucky every day. There were many children of the many families.
I was the oldest of the middle group, and I invented and organized games with the others. We spent the long summer months outside of our respective apartments from morning to night, day after day, all together in the vast green, going home just for food and staying out into the late night, maybe until around midnight or even later. The older group had a less roaming activity, resembling more the vibe of teenagers. The smaller group were just toddlers, and they did their things. We, spanning the independence of primary school without reaching the closures of teenagers and tight as a group of valued members, roamed the architecture and played with it as if it were ours. I remember entering, as many as possible of us all together, literally pressed like sardines, in the small elevator, just to see what it was like, or running in storms like guardie e ladri (guards and thieves); we were all thieves running away from the doorman, the only guard, who had to bear with us and often ran after us pointlessly.
Paola Pivi, We are the baby gang, Galerie Perrotin, New York, USA, 2019 Installation view Photography by Attilio Maranzano Courtesy of Perrotin and the Artist
Frustrated and originally from Southern Italy, he at times threw us a wooden slipper. Exotic for most of my mates (I was also from Southern Italy, but they were not, and his ways were exotic anyway for all of us since he was different from all our fathers who had more white-collar jobs), his angry and sweaty figure running and swearing a few yards behind us –- somehow we knew it was harmless –- rushed our adrenaline to the top, especially when the weight of the slipper might not have been that harmless if on the spot. I guess he always threw it without aiming. But we did not fully know. We explored the corridors of the underground storages, occasionally finding the ones unlocked, we roamed the garbage chute balconies of the highest floors, ducking down not to be seen. We also crouched down in the entrance behind the circular 360-degree table of the reception when the doorman was not there, waiting for the occasional new visitor to bang their entire body in a steady walk onto the large glass wall, which the playful architect had designed as the overall enclosure of the entry. That was all for giggles. I remember we would hang by our hands from a railing of a balcony a few feet from the ground so that we were slightly suspended and we could dangle our legs, and one of us would have to throw a ball at full speed at our lined bodies to try to hit us like skittles. Our families liked us out there like a herd in the grass.
There was also, in the grass, another fun thing of the playful architect: a large, round concrete installation, all built to cover up a little enclosure for some machinery. It was a perfectly round wall, maybe 20-30 meters in diameter, rising up from the grass level and slowly climbing and rolling itself into a small hut, which we called Torretta, or small tower.
We walked the wall like walking the line.
Play is walking the line, trying to be skittles, waiting to see what happens in a glass entryway. In my view, today playful things are rarer, and we long for them less. I think it is because we lost our sense of privacy, and therefore a portion of our freedom. Recently, we are also been faced with very sad news, abuses, atrocities, denials and the precipitation of bad situations, with people being killed on our mobile phones with impunity. Who can play with what is happening around us?
Paola Pivi, We are the baby gang, Galerie Perrotin, New York, USA, 2019 Installation view Photography by Attilio Maranzano Courtesy of Perrotin and the Artist
turning impossible ideas into reality
In my art, I try not to have limits of any sort when I think of something. I treasure freedom of thought. Once the idea is conceived by me or it appears to me, then I try to make it real, but without bringing it into reality, just by making it real from where it was. In simple words I try not to drag it into the compromises of life, but I try to make it as I have seen it.
Sometimes it works magically. How I Roll: when I won (together with 4 other artists) the Golden Lion for Best National Pavilion at the Venice Biennial in 1999 with Untitled (airplane), an upside-down fighter jet, I wondered: what else can I do now with vehicles? A rotating airplane came to my mind. In 2012, I was able to realize with Public Art Fund, built by Art Crating, co-funded by Adam Lindemann, a rotating Piper Seneca at one of the entrances to Central Park. The process, no matter how I can never admit it or focus on it, is not dissimilar to a game.
Today I was with my collaborator Matthew McPhillips in one of my storages, climbing on large crates to reach dusty piles of objects which had been thrown together in a high dark corner in a rush a few years ago. Our hands were black, we were balancing on the edges of the crates of ‘It’s a cocktail party’ as if we were goats in the mountains, balancing between the crevasses, our heads close to the grey dirty ceiling, fully wet in sweat with this new global warming, we were both conscious it was a game, it was a play. The funny thing is, the objects were the dog house, the baby strollers, the tandem bike, the round trampoline, the shovel, the tiki torch, the guitars of the installation ‘Bad idea’, in which a large feathered polar bear of mine is hilariously squashed against the glass of a vitrine by a mountain of objects as if they had entered a precarious storage where all objects fell onto them. I made it at LaRinascente in Milan in 2017 for the show ‘I am tired of eating fish’. Matthew said ‘I wish people could see this part of the art world.’
I thought about taking home the trampoline, but we decided to keep it there for stress relief. All this was happening while Karma Culture Brothers, my composer husband, was obsessively vacuuming the space below us, just to satisfy his own game. He had found not 1 but 4 vacuum cleaners from the various feathers productions and he was using one to clean the others and happily toying with them underneath us, while at times we screamed to him to reach and grab some guitar from us. For all three, this was a much more fun day than heading to the August beach with our fellow Italians.
Paola Pivi 1, 2, cha cha cha, 2017 Urethane foam, plastic, feathers 240 × 117 × 98 cm Photography by Attilio Maranzano Installation view, ‘I am tired of eating fish’, 2017 at La Rinascente, Milan Courtesy of the Artist and Perrotin
Paola Pivi Bad idea, 2017 Urethane foam, plastic, feathers 250 × 120 × 100 cm Photography by Attilio Maranzano Installation view, ‘I am tired of eating fish’, 2017 at La Rinascente, Milan Courtesy of the Artist and Perrotin
Paola Pivi, Ok you are better than me so what?, Galerie Perrotin, New York, USA, 2013 Installation view Photography by Guillaume Ziccarelli Courtesy of Perrotin and the Artist
Paola Pivi Long time no see, 2019 Urethane foam, plastic, feathers 91.44 × 43.18 × 35.56 cm Photography by Guillaume Ziccarelli Courtesy of Perrotin and the Artist
Paola Pivi, Knock it off , 2019 urethane foam, plastic and feathers 56 × 86 × 74 cm Photography by Guillaume Ziccarelli Courtesy of High Line and the Artist
How I Roll, 2012 Piper Seneca, steel supports and motor (rotation at 1 rpm) 11.8 × 12.9 × 11.8 m photography by Attilio Maranzano Installation view, Doris C. Freedman Plaza, Central Park, New York, USA Public Art Fund, 2012 Courtesy of Public Art Fund and the Artist
How I Roll, 2012 Piper Seneca, steel supports and motor (rotation at 1 rpm) 11.8 × 12.9 × 11.8 m photography by Attilio Maranzano Installation view, Doris C. Freedman Plaza, Central Park, New York, USA Public Art Fund, 2012 Courtesy of Public Art Fund and the Artist
Paola Pivi, You know who I am, 2021 Painted bronze and fiberglass 484 × 179 × 160 cm Photography by Attilio Maranzano A High Line Commission Courtesy of High Line and the Artist
Paola Pivi, You know who I am, 2021 Painted bronze and fiberglass 484 × 179 × 160 cm Photography by Timothy Schenck A High Line Commission Courtesy of High Line and the Artist
Paola Pivi, You know who I am, 2021 Painted bronze and fiberglass 484 × 179 × 160 cm Photography by Guillaume Ziccarelli A High Line Commission Courtesy of High Line and the Artist
Paola Pivi Untitled (project for Echigo Tsumari), 2015 inflatable made of tarpaulin and blower 20 × 5 × 2 m Originally commissioned by Echigo Tsumari Triennial, JP photography by Tanguy Beurdeley Courtesy Balloon Museum (at Grand Palais, Paris, 2025)
Paola Pivi Untitled (ladder), 2021 inflatable made of tarpaulin and blower 20 × 5 × 3.6 m photography by FREAKCOMMUNITY Installation view, ‘Art at FULIANG 2021’, Fuliang County, Jiangxi Province, China Courtesy Fuliang
Paola Pivi, Live again, 2026 Painted bronze 122 × 145 × 138 cm Photography by Claire Dorn Installation view, Live again, Perrotin, Paris, 2026 Courtesy of the Artist and Perrotin
Paola Pivi, Live again, 2026 Painted bronze 122 × 145 × 138 cm Photography by Claire Dorn Courtesy of the Artist and Perrotin
Paola Pivi, Live again, (detail), 2026 Painted bronze 122 × 145 × 138 cm Photography by Claire Dorn Courtesy of the Artist and Perrotin
Paola Pivi, It’s a cocktail party, 2008 steel, aluminum, electrical motors, pumps, water, red wine, olive oil, black ink, glycerine, woodruff, espresso coffee, milk and facial tonic 9 parts, each: 535 × 74 × 163 cm Photography by Wolfgang Günzel Installation view, It’s a cocktail party, Portikus, Frankfurt, 2008 Courtesy of the Artist
Paola Pivi, It’s a cocktail party, 2008 steel, aluminum, electrical motors, pumps, water, red wine, olive oil, black ink, glycerine, woodruff, espresso coffee, milk and facial tonic 9 parts, each: 535 × 74 × 163 cm Photography by Alessandro Zambianchi Installation view, It’s a cocktail party, Massimo De Carlo, Milan, 2008 Courtesy of the Artist and Massimo De Carlo
Paola Pivi I wish I am fish, 2009 photographic print mounted on aluminium 160 × 240 cm Photography by Hugo Glendinning Courtesy of the Artist and Massimo De Carlo
Paola Pivi is an Italian artist whose multidisciplinary practice spans sculpture, installation, photography, video, and performance. Pivi is known for transforming familiar objects, animals, and situations through unexpected changes of scale, color, material, and context. Her works include polar bears practicing yoga, zebras appearing in the Arctic, and goldfish traveling by airplane, using absurdity and humor to challenge familiar ways of seeing. Across her practice, Pivi creates improbable situations that invite viewers to reconsider what is possible.
project info:
artist: Paola Pivi | @paolapivi
This guest essay is part of designboom’s PLAY chapter, exploring what would happen if form didn’t follow function, but pleasure. Discover more stories that celebrate joy, imagination and playfulness here.
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