Federico Clavarino (*1984 in Turin, Italy) is a visual artist, researcher and educator. He studied creative writing at Scuola Holden in Turin and photography at BlankPaper Escuela in Madrid. He also holds a Master of Research degree from the Royal College of Art in London, where he is currently pursuing his PhD. Seven of his books have been published so far and his works have been exhibited in museums, galleries and festivals around Europe. He lectures and gives workshops internationally.

Federico Clavarino and Tami Izko have so far collaborated on two projects: “Eel Soup”, which was exhibited in Brussels, Milan, Istanbul and Łódź before being published as a book in 2022, and “Via Spaventa”, which was recently shown in Geneva. “The Crab’s House” is their third collaboration.

What does it mean to belong when you are always leaving?

The Crab’s House takes its name from the hermit crabs’ way of inhabiting found shells or other objects and the social mechanism that allows them to move into a new “home” once they grow out of the one they have: by forming a queue, biggest to smallest, hermit crabs pass on their house to the next ones in line so that none of them will be left unsheltered. Following several years of continued migrations that have meant moving into many temporary homes, Tami and Federico started to work on this autobiographical project that entails the construction of ephemeral “houses” made from the impressions they collect in the different places The Crab’s House takes form. The first iteration of the project was the result of four months of collecting, casting and photographing objects in and around Schöppingen: the vegetables and fruits they harvested from the garden, the bottles left behind at the summer carnival, a large gummy bear from a local flea market, bottles and glasses bought at the Torhaus on Saturdays or found in the trash, the hay bales covered in plastic that decorate the landscape, a windmill blade, the cornfields and the corn, the apples and the light hitting small corners of our studio, the houses they saw others build. All of these things are part of the home they set up in Schöppingen. Even the walls were made with panels collected from the wood workshop, the street and the nearby dump. However distorted its initial form may be, each image and object displayed in Tami and Federico’s installation traces back to a moment they lived during their stay. Just like when one moves on to a new place and dismantles the previous one, The Crab’s House lived in a temporary installation that ceased to exist once the show was over, but the memories created within it, the lingering social ties and the things learnt remain, overlap and interact with the Crab Houses they install in other places. Perhaps the hermit crab is mistakenly named, as its way of dwelling is built on receiving and passing on. To the artists, a home is something that is ever mutating, and although it might be an abstraction in their own individual minds and memories, it materially relies on the existence of others.