ABOUT

Ozi is the love petname which my father Alain Moreu used for Roseline Moreu Lubrano di Scampamorte, my mother. 

I have never heard anyone else call her that, and I was very reluctant to use this name for this project, feeling that I was kidnapping the love name which belonged only to them. Ozi was also the name which they bestowed on the boat which he gave to her—“their latest extravagance”, as they liked to say-and since then everyone has known the origin of the name, without however calling my mother by it. 

Although I hesitated a lot, I did not hesitate for long. Seven years after her death, as I have already said elsewhere, it remains impossible for me to say goodbye to the woman who greeted me on the first day of my life. And if I can still talk to you about her, what I want, most of all, is to allow her to live a thousand and one new lives beyond the thousand and one which she really lived, some of which were not known to me. So I conjure up some of them which I am actually discovering, some others which I have known about, but I can also reinvent her. I can talk about this mother who is still present to us and turn her into a character who will outlive us all.

There are several reasons why I feel the need to express myself again by means of written material and images:

—I am writing this text exactly 10,096 days after the death of my brother Jean-François, 2,672 days after the death of my mother, 657 days after the death of my friend Simon. Throughout my life, I could always see clearly this daily counting without the help of any calculation, sometimes without even remembering the original dates. I have mentioned three tragic events, but I can also sometimes be assailed by counts which have no particular interest or reason. I am unable to decide to do it for a specific date, nor can I summon up this or that count which I have already mentioned. There are periods in my life when I have absolutely none available. What I do know, however, is that their occurrence in my consciousness means that I feel an urge to express something inexpressible, to make my history my own, and to recall it in my own way. 

—On the 26th of September 2021, all through the last telephone conversation I had with Simon, with whom I had shared most of my life on an emotional as well as professional level, I was far from knowing that he would choose to take his own life two days later…

We were talking about some clothes he had ordered for me online a couple of months ago. They had been delivered a while ago and apart from a T-shirt everything else was far too small for me. We had returned the items which did not fit and I quickly received a new package which, again, was made up of small size clothes… I found him unusually upset by this situation but he told me he was going to deal with it. Then no news, until the last conversation during which he told me that, unfortunately, the supplier would not have my size available any more. I answered him that they were very beautiful and that I could send them to him since they would suit him perfectly. He refused and said: “No, it is important that you keep them, what counts is the memory.” At that moment, I did not fully understand what he was telling me.

I have pondered over that sentence since then and about the very notion of remembrance and about Memory itself. The former, which is so necessary, and the latter which imposes itself impersonally without really being shared with others. My third motivation was dictated to me in a sense: 

—We must force ourselves to escape Memory when it freezes forever everything which drives us forward then disappears and washes away life’s surprises at the same time.

And for the creativity of memories, their little and big lies, for their emotion, their inventiveness, the tears and the laughter… For the myths and legends… For the innocent show-offs and the impatience of the heart… For what they have in common with what is unexpected in life, for those which keep driving us on and astonishing our loved ones well beyond the time to say goodbye: memories must be cherished and allowed to live! Let them live their own lives … you have to blur the more intimate or less glorious ones, amplify those which seem to be just expecting that, reinvent the form of their articulation and pass them on. This is the life of a memory, its ability to constantly reinvent itself. The life of a souvenir is equal to the flow of life.

You have to recount them over and over again, and as they are imperceptibly improved each time, they are reinvented, adapted… At the same time, you have to create stories which will be of no surprise to anyone, and will even be reassuring; but you should also invent tales which will come as a surprise for your loved ones, even to the point of conceiving impossible ones, and even shocking ones, you have to offer memories a life which they breathe into those who cannot live it anymore due to circumstances or choice… Make your loved ones experience times which they have not known, make them experience those times which we discover without them. Create memories in order to keep them in our lives and leave Memory to the cold stones of cemeteries. These tombstones will tell nothing to children who never knew those who dwell there, whereas these stories told by memories are passed on, and constantly undergo new transformations, sustain life itself.

I wanted this project to be both a kind of sophisticated performance and a simple production in terms of form, and I deeply regret that our friend Gilles Mahé is no longer with us to see the extent to which the freedom he gave to forms of artistic expression remains an essential factor in my view. In this case, we are talking about creating the T-OZI T-shirt brand (with all the aspects of a real trademark, logo, design, production, labeling … right down to the presentation and marketing catalogue which you are holding in your hands) which, taken as a whole, is really just one and the same art work… From a single picture of Roseline “Ozi” Moreu Lubrano di Scampamorte, taken in 1981 at the Col du Passon, it comes to creating simple or more complex, moving or amusing models, each intended as a gift, most often aimed at a single person. Some of the designs were published in more than one edition, usually two and only once up to four, and were then dedicated to the same number of relatives to whom they might correspond.

Produced in collaboration with my colleague, professional partner and quasi-brother Julien Maeda, these creations relate the processing of the photograph to the recipient and the letters OZI in words or expressions which appear in the image. Sometimes intimate or filled with emotion, at times sophisticated, they can also be playful or even verge on simplicity. 

That is just the way it is.

Ozi would certainly have liked the idea and the process, Mum would undoubtedly have been uncomfortable being the subject of it all, Roseline would have hated some of the most conspicuous choices, but laughed out loud at others among which some bear the most remote relation to her true personality. Surely, she would never have worn a T-shirt with her portrait or any obtrusive pattern. But that was before the new lives which I am dedicating to her, so who knows?

SM

Paris, 17th of July 2023