Nanette Yannuzzi - Installation/Performance

House Works: A Chronicle of the Small seeks to magnify through its accretion, the mundane and common, and in doing so illuminate its beauty. The unpaid labor of the home opens a space for creativity much as the unpaid labor of the artist does. House Works is the result of a series of ‘Actions’ that I performed/framed from 2000-2005. Later these ‘Actions’ were coalesced into this Installation---not so much because I had intended this when I was doing them but because the opportunity to imagine them in a public space became as compelling as the ‘Actions’ themselves.

Piano with Scenes from Life
(‘Video Days’ is a single channel loop).
5’ x 4’ x 23”
Material: Refurbished Upright Piano, Metronomes, Video Days (2000)

These videos were ‘collected’ over several months by installing two cameras on tripods in our home. My intention was to leave them there long enough to make the habit of turning them off and on a matter of routine. In a busy household this happened more quickly then I’d imagined. Many times they were turned on forgotten about, recording the rhythms, stillness and challenges of daily life. Excerpts from the many hours of video I collected became part of this installation.

Piano with Scenes from Life - Video Days
(‘Video Days’ is a single channel loop).
5’ x 4’ x 23”
Material: Refurbished Upright Piano, Metronomes, Video Days (2000)

‘Video Days’ was collected over several months by installing two cameras in our home. The cameras were manually turned on but usually forgotten about, recording the rhythms, stillness, and challenges of daily life.

The Hours-Synchronic and Diachronic
Dimension: 18” x 24”
Material: Hand Wound Clocks, Table

A gathering of hand-wound alarm clocks tick away the hours of a day and night. Time is something I think about a lot----how it’s changed since the onslaught of the internet, how it changes when raising children, how it changes while working full-time and producing Art.

(S)wept
Dimension: 10' x 9'
Material: Action= floor sweepings collected and saved in ziplock bags in 2003, clothespins, found objects, rope

This action occurred over a finite period of time during a time of many personal transitions and challenges. I would think about the process of living and the many unrecognized moments that make up a day. Sometimes I would reflect on the distinctive quality of a particular day, notate it, and add it to the debris I’d just swept up from the floor.

(S)wept
Dimension: 10' x 9'
Material: Action= floor sweepings collected and saved in ziplock bags in 2003, clothespins, found objects, rope

(S)wept - Detail View

The Hours
Dimension: 4’ x 6 ‘x 23”
Material: 19th century wood pegged bed rails, clocks, cloth, video (video 2000) Welded steel frame, 10" caster wheels

Action: Two cameras were set on stationary tripods in my home for a period of several months. They are turned on and of intermittently but often forgotten about recording, without discretion, the mundane moments of our everyday. In the mania that is common to family life our beds offer few hours of rest. Instead they become a place to land hopefully to dream about what has been, what will be, what we hope for.

Los Pequenos Milagros de la Vida
Dimension: 6’ x 5’ x 20” (Action/Collection-1996-2005)
Material: Restored bookcase with added cast iron claw feet. Painted shoe collection, Remington typewriter from collaboration with poet Calvin Hernton, Motor

Unable to discard the embossed remnants of their wearers travel I collected our outgrown shoes. Eventually they found their way into a bookcase I’d refurbished. Spray painted red they occupy the place where books would normally be stored. Holding their own stories along the threads of their soles and lopsided arches, some, unable to stand, hang from a slowly turning motorized umbilicus. (For R.E.Y. 1953-2001)

Los Pequenos Milagros de la Vida - Detail View

Los Pequenos Milagros de la Vida - Rear View

Delivery Cart (for M.S.)
Dimension: 4’ x 36”
Material: Collections of my kids hair, Audio, Laundry/Lint residue (Action/Collections:1997-2005)

This piece could have easily been titled shopping cart or stroller as it has evidence of both. However, in this Installation, Delivery Cart is about holding and dispensing seemingly insignificant residue.

Collections: Entropy and Resistance
Dimension: 3’ x 14” x 4”
Material: cement, bucket, paint, teeth, fingernails (Action/Collection- series-1997-2003)

A colorful column holds an upturned wash bucket, evidence of entropy and resistance in the form of a collection of my children’s teeth, hair, and fingernail clippings collected from 1997-2005

Collections: Entropy and Resistance - Detail View
Dimension: 3’ x 14” x 4”
Material: cement, bucket, paint, teeth, fingernails (Action/Collection- series-1997-2003)

Collections: Entropy and Resistance - Detail View

Collections: Entropy and Resistance
Dimension: 3’ x 14” x 4”
Material: cement, bucket, paint, teeth, fingernails (Action/Collection- series-1997-2003)

This image shows the residue of some of the earliest ‘Actions’ in this series. I collect the moltings/tracings of my everyday as evidence of the creativity and labor therein. Like the work of an artist, the labor and creativity of home is often invisible and devalued.

Collections: Entropy and Resistance Audio recording device

During the early years of child raising I often found myself isolated from adult interaction and conversation. It was challenging and yet I was aware of the fact that perhaps I wasn’t valuing the conversations I was having. Over a period of approximately a month I wore an audio recording device belted to my waist and would randomly record my conversations.