The Adolescent is a site-specific installation that takes the form of a set for a party – a coming-of-age celebration. After being empty for nearly two decades, the factory ensemble at Villa Filanda Antonini will soon be renovated to fulfill a new function. Although far from being a ruin, the building shows signs of disrepair and traces of its former use, with its rough industrial halls, dilapidated office spaces, and greenery pressing up against the windows.

In this work the building is personified, treated as an awkward adolescent on the cusp of adulthood. Coming-of-age is defined as the attainment of prominence, respectability, recognition, or maturity. Like an adolescent, this place will soon start a new phase in its life – a chapter created, and handed to it, by its developers.

A printed pattern sets the scene, applied directly to the wall separating the rough industrial halls from former office spaces, while a row of lights on the floor welcomes guests to the space. Taking the form of glowing eye-shaped shrines, they point the way towards smaller office spaces filled with arrangements of weeds and a drink typical to the area, on offer.

The abstracted party scene is an awkward, imported presence in an empty industrial space. Adolescence is often characterized by conflict, and here too the language adopted challenges the harmony and mimesis though continuous visual dissonances.