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Andrea Ferrero - A veces duermo con los ojos abiertos
Although the playground seems like a place for running, climbing, and sliding, Andrea Ferrero’s work reveals it as a theater where bodies rehearse routines of obedience. The seesaw, the swing, and the slide—intervened with monstrous gargoyles, chimera faces, and spiked ornaments—become surveillance machines disguised as play. The most innocent gestures—swinging, sliding, balancing—betray choreographies of power.
Sleeping with One’s Eyes Open is to remain in that ambiguous state where wakefulness never fully fades. It is to live under the constant suspicion of a gaze that watches even in dreams. In this playground, that gaze has a body: grotesque creatures that guard each apparatus. Figures that historically adorned imperial gardens and fortresses now draw close to the body, accompany it in its back-and-forth motion, and address it in every movement. To sleep with one’s eyes open is to play under their surveillance, with the certainty that even imagination is traversed by invisible orders.
The seesaw reminds us that no action is innocent. Two bodies facing each other depend on one another to sustain movement. Each descent is a gesture of dominance; each ascent implies submitting to an opposing force. What appears to be a game of trust is a lesson in reciprocal domination: remaining above or sinking below depends on a balance of power. And amid this rocking motion, the monsters lurk. Embedded in the structure, they laugh in silence as they watch the game reproduce its own logic: one rises because the other falls, one reigns because the other yields. The game becomes a choreographed nightmare.
In its hypnotic sway, the swing embodies another form of discipline: the impulse to fly is always chained. The body is propelled in search of freedom in the air, yet the chains return it again and again to the same point. Oscillating within an invisible limit, the body learns to repeat a gesture framed by the structure. Meanwhile, the monstrous eyes do not only watch—they also set the rhythm. In this playground, freedom in the air becomes a mirage when motionless winged creatures remind us that even the desire to fly can be domesticated.
The slide is a directed fall. First, the effort of climbing; then, complete surrender to gravity. There is no possible deviation: the body follows a pre-determined path. The thrill of risk, the illusion of bravery, is in fact obedience to a fixed trajectory. Discipline is inscribed in the body: internalized in the muscles, in the memory of repeated gesture. And as the body descends, the monsters celebrate with their metallic smiles, mocking a fall with no escape.
Andrea Ferrero turns this playground into a shared nightmare. The viewer, by participating, plays with the monsters and under their rules, becoming part of this extended vigilance. Thus, the playground is not only a transformed childhood memory, but a metaphor for the present: a world where power requires our participation to sustain itself, where surveillance hides beneath the mask of the playful, and where playing with monsters may be the only way to dream while awake.