Splendore: From Music to Performance Art

Mattia Barro, known as Splendore, an Italian queer artist from Ivrea now based in Milan, has transitioned from a decade-long music career to performance art. After his indie band L'Orso disbanded in 2016, he took a period of silence, coming out as bi+ and pansexual in 2019 with the birth of Splendore. His latest EP 'OMG, am I really feeling these feelings I'm feeling right now?' is accompanied by a visual project exploring body, identity, and sexuality. The performance study, tentatively titled 'BTW, I still don't know if I'm really really really feeling these feelings I'm feeling right now' or 'Il corpo banale', aims to strip the body of societal and capitalist constructs, presenting it as generic, anatomical flesh without gender or identity. Barro cites Charlemagne Palestine, Vanessa Beecroft, Vito Acconci, and Annie Sprinkle as influences. The work repositions music as secondary to visual narrative, introducing a narrator to decenter the artist's role.