First drawing: "a message to everyone", "just follow it, don't ask why".
Second drawing: "everyone is strange here, of course nobody is normal'', "you can choose to be one of them, except for the fish on the top. This is Andra, Andrea likes to eat fish".

These days, between hugs and a few tears, it is difficult to find the words with which to say goodbye. The work bears words that sound like consolation, but above all like the knowledge that what we have lived through these months we will never forget.
The repetitiveness of the gesture tries to fill every space and every moment, as if to stop time, at least for a while.
The result is reminiscent of the letters and thoughts we have exchanged, which in "written" form help us to say what we feel and which will remain in time.

The work represents a part of Davide's Erasmus... the smell of tobacco and the stench of smoke, during evenings in Place Plumerau and cigarette breaks in the library.

All accompanied by a healthy and constant polemic towards anything, in this case art and me telling him "anything can be art" to encourage him to do something for the exhibition.
Plus we throw in a reference to Cattelan that never hurts.

A photograph to represent displacement, transition, moving. In the same image, the contrasting elements make up the experience of disorientation in a new place, full of ambition and energy but also of insecurity and compression.

In a bare environment, not yet subject to the appropriation of the individual, the only elements that emerge are essential and ambiguous symbols: a piece of bread, a vehicle of sharing and conviviality, lies broken in a corner of the photograph, and part of it burns in the pan behind it, now reduced to mere smoke; a branch of parsley, a plant chosen for its strong flavour as a reference to the dimension of vivacity and pleasure, is similarly pushed to the side, now close to withering; an open window, covered by a heavy black veil, lets in a small glimmer of light, while little smoke, few thoughts come out.

Against the same background, common not only to this photograph but to an entire series, which can be consulted online, a number of characters stand out individually: these are the young people we know, who have decided to undergo the experience of detachment, of living in a foreign and distant place.

Faced with such a step, reactions can be the most diverse, and we have wanted to represent them: from closure to victory over one's fears, the 'Inside-out' series aims precisely to show that the different attitudes of each individual in Erasmus are due to a fundamental experience of estrangement. An experience that, after all, unites and unites us.

Each individual, although surrounded by and reaching out to the community, partly lives this experience alone, and his or her way of dealing with it can also be at the same time conflicting, not unequivocal.

We hope with this to have rendered an image in which each of us can recognise ourselves, in the continuous oscillation between confinement within ourselves and openness to others, between Inside and Outside.

Once you are immersed in the flow of positive things you have to let them happen.
The reference to Orietta Berti's famous song is clear.

“I don’t wish you all sort of gifts.
I just wish you what most people don’t have:
I wish you the time to be happy and to laugh
and if you use it wisely, you can make something out of it.
I wish you the time for your actions and reflections,
time not only for yourself, but also to give away to others.
I wish you the time – not to hustle and run
but the time to be content.
I wish you the time – not to simply let it pass
I wish that you have enough time to be amazed and to trust,
and not simply to look at the watch.
I wish you the time to reach for the stars
and the time to grow, to mature
I wish you the time to hope and to love
It makes no sense to postpone this time.
I wish you the time to find yourself
to see happiness in each day and each hour.
I wish you the time also to forgive.
I wish you the time to live.”

Carlos thought about what the Erasmus is by doing a calligramma...can you find the answer?

Two objects, two meanings come together: a price of bread above an open book.
The bread is what we have been eating in the university canteen these months, it represents sharing. According to Élise, "The idea would be that everyone would tear off a piece of bread to reproduce the gesture of sharing, just as we have shared so many lunches in the canteen over these months and also so many other moments outside and inside the university."

The book represents the moments of study, but also the reason that brought us to Tours. The university united our life paths, brought us together with very different people and created beautiful friendships.

The university (book) represents what united us, which was the basis for what remains most important: sharing, meetings, experiences (bread).

In these months I have often thought about relationships and interactions with other people. Those who are either far away in Italy, or near me here in France. I imagine the energy flowing between us as coloured streams.

The first drawing was made by me and my boyfriend. When he came to Tours, we randomly drew lines together.

The second drawing represents me and my grandmother Angelica, who passed away in February. My family was far away and I found consolation in reminding myself, through the drawing, that we are energy, that it doesn't matter the distance or the absence of someone when you have that person in your heart.

This is a phrase that followed Giordana during these months of Erasmus, a mantra that guided her experiences and the way she lived them.

Giovanni explains it by saying, "It all revolves around this concept."
We definitely see in it the influence of Fontana and the YouTube video "The Pills - The Doubt."

Mario thought: "what is art?"
Mario answered himself by displaying a reverse plunger: an artist is someone who takes objects from reality and makes them useless, art is what is taken from the useful. This is the style of the big master Duchamp!

And so we wonder what a reverse plunger might mean....

In my opinion, the plunger can represent a moment of difficulty (for example when you enlarge your bathroom) but at the same time a moment when you become independent to solve problems. This is what Erasmus is all about, being far from home and learning to make do with everything, or almost everything...

According to Emma, it is in the difficulties that we get closer to each other. We are going through the same experiences, and many times the same problems. In these months we have discovered a thousand resources in the people around us.
For example, the same plunger was lent to Angelica just after Mario had used it.

What do you think it might mean a reverse plunger?

Miryam drew the view from Carlos's room. In recent months I think I have seen more of her in that room than in his.
Above "El mundo iluminando y yo despierta," the last line of the poem "Primero Sueño" by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. You can find it in the link below.

Photo of an inscription on the beach...
The fact that it was written on the sand, near the sea waves that will soon erase it, represents how short a time Erasmus is in our lives.
We try to endure the ephemerality of this experience by living each moment intensely, bonding deeply with the people we meet and creating indelible memories, which we sometimes photograph, as was done in the case of this writing on the sand.

The legend of the tower of Babel tells why we speak different languages: men wanted to build a tall tower that would reach up to touch the sky, but their ambition was punished by God who gave them different languages so that they could not understand each other.
In Erasmus we meet people from all over the world, and the magic happens when we discover that we can always to find a way to communicate with each other, no matter our differences.

We also included the cleaning lady's notice among the works, to remind us that everything is art.

It is simply a warning sign hanging on one of the walls of the communal kitchen that we integrated with the works in the exhibition. It is beautiful how it makes everyone who enters the kitchen smile, how everyone wonders who wrote AC DC on it.
It reminds us that these are places experienced by someone we do not know. That they are places of passage in which we are unlikely to leave a visible trace, but surely the opposite is true: the places are tracing indelible marks in our memory.

The drawing is a reproduction of a photo taken at Puits c'est tout, the most popular bar during Erasmus....
Yaiza describes it by saying "the essential is invisible from the camera."
In the original photo are Fabiana and Yaiza.