Art “in-perfections”: on art and communicating truth / Matteo Sica

Today, on the same social media pages where, for years, I usually have only shared the best and happiest inspiring events from my artist’s life and creations, I shared something new and different. Here, let me paste it for you: “I’m tired of the fictional perfection of social media where everything seems to be going well for everyone every time. But don’t we want to stop this thing and be more human and imperfect? Ps all is well”

This read the caption for the photo of my own legs, one of which shows a large Band-Aid, and iodine tincture stains all over its hairy skin. Now, if “for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction”, for every new action, one might expect a new reaction. And it came indeed. Besides to shows of support, hearts, hugs in emoticon form, there was something new. There was aggression and reproach towards my obviously misread intentions. I had hit something.

A little flashback. I have been “a daily full-time creative” for about 10 years now, and all I have been striving to deliver has been a message of… good old good mood. You know, happy vibes? Colours! The guy from South of Italy, he’s always happy, sharing with us an empowering message of foolish utopia of a rainbowy harmony. Well, those days are over! Today, I showed my “bleeding wounds” and my equally empowering message was: “show, integrate, communicate, accept, love and exhibit the imperfection”. Some people took it as a twisted dramatic form of self-advertising. I had not seen that coming. This is why I hurried to write this article down. I touched something and I want to hear more about it from more people.

In-perfection, imperfection. If, too often now, the message dripping from a lot of people’s social media makes you conclude that a perfect life is “normal” with all this posting about celebrations, achievements, smiles, and "best of’s”, there is going to be necessarily a part of the audience which, by comparison, will feel bad, imperfect and never good enough. Because a lot of people know themselves also in their bad, weak and imperfect moments. “But that’s your shit!”. And nobody wants to see your shit, it seems.

So, my beloved sister, and brother, next time you feel imperfect because someone makes you feel so, please shout to them to the top of your lungs: “You know what imperfection means?!? It means “in perfection”. Yes, I am imperfect. It means I am “in perfect”, I am getting there. I am on my way towards perfect. I don’t know if I’ll get there. And I don’t know whether that’s the most important thing to strive for.

Actually, if we only just stopped to read the ancient meaning deep inside the word “perfect”, participle from the Latin verb “perficere”, it means “complete, completed, done, ready, accomplished”. It did not mean flawless or problem-less! Today’s “perfect” is a rather foolish idealization of that term. And in arts, just like in life, it creates more damage than good.

Let me give you an example from art school. In a classical and generic sense, art school implies that you become “perfect”, a master at something. But a master at something means that she is completely, fully knowledgeable and experienced in that topic. It doesn’t mean that everything will always come out of her hands, brush, or violin perfectly perfect. It means that a master is so complete that she accepts and integrates the entire spectrum of the experience as a creator. She has made so many mistakes, so many more than anybody else in that field or discipline… that she can now be called perfect. Complete. A master has had so much courage to make mistakes that eventually they are to be called perfect.

Let’s be perfect. Let’s be complete, but one day, not now. All our innovations, visions and creations precisely exist not because they are perfect but because they are “in perfect”. I’ll see you on our ways to our perfections. I’ll see you in perfections.

Meet Matteo Sica The Colour Wave on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/matteocolourwave/