Laura Modoni

Laura Modoni is currently a student at Royal Academy of Art, The Hague (The Netherlands).

Instagram: @LauraMo

Project Title: Houses of Houses

Medium: cement, iron wire, chicken wire

Date: 2025

Concept/Idea of the work:

Time moved quickly, yet each day felt stretched, marked by the constant, almost painful chirping of the cicadas. At the back of the garden I set up a small studio from two wooden tripods and an old door used as a table, the first gesture in building a sort of temporary home for creating other temporary homes. Around me I gathered discarded materials like PVC pipes, fragments of abandoned ruins close to the villas, and cement, exploring ways to shape objects that would inhabit the garden, exposed to the same light and sound that shaped them.

All these pieces together formed “Houses of Houses”, a constellation of projects that included the small cement pieces cast in the found pipes as well as other works scattered around the garden, made with cement and thick iron wire, either knotted or used as internal structures. As a whole, they became preparatory to one another. The process was intuitive, guided by what was immediately available, and all the works follow the same material logic and approach. The cicadas perhaps link them in an unseen dialogue, leaving their exoskeletons on some pieces as evidence that they too had lived there.

Along with the conversation that formed throughout the residency, Leda also guided the placement of the works in the garden, helping the objects relate to the surrounding space.