DUBBI su carta

Assab One, Milan
24 -26 May 2022

DUBBI su carta presented a selection of the original drawings created by Tarik Berber for Dubbi, the animated music video for Italian rapper Marracash and a single from the album Noi, loro, gli altri. The exhibition took place at Assab One in Milan on 24 May 2022, coinciding with the official release of the video.

The animation was built entirely from approximately 2,500 drawings made by hand, at a rhythm of around twelve drawings for every second of film. Developed over several months, the project required drawing and music to work in precise synchrony, translating the flow and emotional progression of Marracash’s lyrics into a continuous sequence of transforming images.

A solitary walking figure becomes the visual thread running through the work. As the song unfolds, its initially clear outline is gradually invaded by marks, words, filaments and shifting forms. Family, memory, anxiety, love and isolation emerge and disappear through successive metamorphoses, until the accumulation of images gives way to a final sense of release. References ranging from the Milanese periphery to Alberto Giacometti’s walking figure enter a visual language suspended between observation, symbolism and the subconscious.

Removed from the speed of the finished animation, the drawings acquired a different presence within the exhibition. Individual frames and sequences could be observed as works in themselves, revealing subtle changes in gesture and form that are almost imperceptible on screen. The installation, curated by Collezione Ramo, followed the development of the scenes and offered a rare view of the handmade process behind the moving image.

DUBBI su carta brought together drawing, animation and music while making visible the enormous physical process concealed behind a few minutes of film: thousands of individual marks becoming movement, rhythm and narrative.