Luca De Leva's Thyself Agency: Travel into Others' Lives

Luca De Leva (b. 1986, Milan) presents Thyself Agency at Pinksummer in Genoa, a conceptual travel agency that offers week-long exchanges of lives with strangers. Since 2011, participants provide an identikit and report impressions, which inform the exhibition. The installation features an intentionally unwelcoming white cube with metallic presentation inducing a trance, and trap-sculptures like a suitcase, a worn hat, and a mousetrap holding agency materials and business cards reading 'Be a lighthouse to yourself.' Two large identity cards of experiment subjects hang at the back. Beyond a curtain of sewn trousers, a show-within-a-show displays seven charcoal-reworked photographs of the artist's sister, who has a cognitive disorder, depicted as a domestic oracle. The exhibition opened in 2023.