Matthew Mazzotta
UPLIFTING EXPERIENCE
Steel, Wood, Polypropylene, 2024
While developing UPLIFTING EXPERIENCE, the artist spoke to community members who described their houses and backyards as important spaces of social life and personal expression. Throughout the neighborhood, diverse musical sounds and culinary scents emanate from homes, weaving together to form a unique quilt of cultural identities.
This artwork also honors Sacramento's history of infrastructure developments to prevent flooding. In the 19th century, streets and buildings were raised several feet above the original ground level as a precaution.
This artwork uses hundreds of brightly colored spinners to create a sculpture in the shape of a house. When wind passes through, the elevated house responds with a playful and dynamic motion, reflecting the rich life within each home.
Matthew Mazzotta, Napkin Sketch of Uplifting Experience, 2023.
Matthew Mazzotta, Design Rendering of Uplifting Experience, 2023.
About Matthew Mazzotta
Matthew Mazzotta works at the intersection of art, activism, and urbanism, focusing on the power of the built environment to shape our relationships and experiences. His community-specific public projects integrate new forms of civic participation and social engagement into the built environment and reveal how the spaces we travel through and spend our time living within have the potential to become distinct sites for intimate, radical, and meaningful exchanges. Each project starts by creating temporary public spaces for listening—‘Outdoor Living Room’—as a way to capture voices from local people that might not attend more formal meetings. Stemming from this approach are experiences that involve people from a range of backgrounds working together to create new models of living that contribute to local culture beyond the economic realm.