Rachel whiteread biography

KOOZ This idea of “mummifying the air in the room” becomes extremely interesting when analysing your latest project And the Animals Were Sold, currently on show at GAMeC in Bergamo.

You present casts of sixty chairs, each placed exactlytwo metres apart, as per the requirements for social distancing imposed during theCOVID-19 outbreak. Could you expand upon what prompted the project — especially in Bergamo, one of the first and worst sites to be hit by the pandemic back in 2020?

RW When I was asked to go to Bergamo to do a piece — the first place to which I travelled to ‘after’ Covid-19 — I knew what had happened in the region which, outside of China, was one of the first and worst to be hit by the pandemic: every family lost someone.

I mean, you remember the pictures on the news of what happened. So I wanted to try and make a work which would not illustrate Covid-19 but which could rather help heal the place and help people deal with the enormity of the loss.

I travel to Italy