The market stall

In October, I had the chance to set up my first market stall in Berlin.
I was thrilled at the idea of having a stall! I impulsively prepared an excessive number of prints of my drawings.
The market… among people touching things, looking, asking. Who would have thought I would end up in this completely unknown area.
I couldn’t imagine that this experience, the market among people, would turn out to be disastrous, with brutal outcomes.

My friends, if you follow me on Instagram, you already know: not only did no one buy my prints, but people didn’t even stop to look. Despite trying to attract attention by placing an original, perhaps the most detailed and accurate of my realistic portraits, ‘Pride’, on a small easel. ‘Pride’ was a portrait that garnered a lot of interest on social media, but there, displayed at the market, it literally went unnoticed.
Streams of people passed by my stand, indifferent.
Instead, it seemed like everyone was interested in the spray to neutralize the smell of poo, displayed at the neighboring stand. People stopped to ask curiously, laughed, chatted cheerfully, and bought the spray to freshen up the toilet. One guy bought five at once! And it wasn’t cheap, but it had a super cool packaging. They wrapped it in black tissue paper and then put it in the box, sprinkled some rose petals on top, closed it, and put everything in a paper bag with a string handle. That guy sold so many bottles of toilet scent spray that, at the end of the day, while dismantling the market stand, he came to hug me and tried to console me for my obvious failure.
So… not only did I not sell anything, but I also had to endure the sorrowful compassion of the guy selling the toilet spray. My self-esteem was shattered, and so was my back, considering that to get back home, I had to drag a chair along.

I must confess that, when I got home, I threw myself into my husband’s arms, cursing the artist’s life in all its forms. And after finishing our evening routine with the kids – pajamas, brushing teeth, bedtime story – when the house fell silent, I collapsed on the bed, consumed by terrible doubts. What am I doing? And, above all, why am I doing it? Couldn’t I have a normal job too?
And above all, what did this toilet spray offer that was so special? Apart from the guy who knew how to engage people and talk about the smell of excrement in hushed tones, amid mischievous giggles, as if it were their funny little secret… besides that, there had to be something more, something essential… The toilet spray offered the chance to talk about pooping again. Poo, pooping, smelling, farting… and to laugh about that, like children do. It also had the magical power to neutralize our very ‘human-ness,’ erase odors, transcend the miserable condition of our bodily functions. The spray, with its super cool packaging, carried a promise of divinity.

Regarding me and my drawings, reflecting on it, I see that I made a serious mistake. I brought my works into a context where streams of people circulated, jostling, crowding with drinks in hand, with hot dog sandwiches, enjoying the weekend light-heartedly. And they probably weren’t in the disposition to linger and contemplate subtle details, light nuances, especially in black and white, therefore visually poor in impact, unable to stand out in that environment rich with visual stimuli.
I had been considering for a while adding brightly colored elements to my drawings’ compositions. But at that point, after the market, returning to color seemed urgent to me!

Color would have given the works an additional tool to traverse their unpredictably long lifespan. It would have given them the chance to catch the eye of the distracted passerby. The eccentricity of color as a bridge to access a quieter level of contemplation, where the details lie, the nuances made with micro-hatching.

In the following days, I realized that the frustration, the acute humiliation, were opening up a fast lane towards a clearer awareness of what was lacking, of what I could do to strengthen the visual impact of my drawings.

By this, I don’t mean to say that the market was a positive experience. It wasn’t.
And I’ll say more. Especially us artists, who have an emotional bond with our products, should be very careful about mistekes like this. We should carefully assess the context in which to showcase our artworks, precisely to avoid such ​​energy breakdown, that result from situations hurting self-esteem. It must be considered that resiliently resisting certain situations requires lots of energy, and it’s not always easy in the following days to stand up and start creating again. The risk of encountering creative block is always around the corner.

After all, over time, I’ve specialized in always finding a way to profit even from the most disastrous falls. And I truly believe that the market helped me put more effort into a renewal process I was already considering. So thank you, shi*ty market (in the truest sense of the term).
And, as always, thank you Berlin. My gritty Berlin, which occasionally whacks me to shake me from my torpor, and always offers precious opportunities for growth.

Thank you for reading these fragments of my life. If you’d like to stay updated on my content, leave your email below, and we’ll keep in touch. Bye-bye!