o.T., 2010

o.T. (2010) is a painting comprised of four equally sized panels installed in a horizontal line. The work illustrates a surreal narrative in which domestic activities are brought outdoors, with the line work of each scene connected to its adjacent panel. The black and white composition in clearly delineated spaces runs adjacent to the comic strip influence found in many of Galli’s artist’s books. Furniture, houses, and objects which are brought to life by drawing join a modest-looking creature with its hands overlapped at its torso. We see familiar symbols from Gallis repertoire of motifs—the teacup, the extended arm with a brush, the chair, the fork, the house. These elements exist amongst clouds and tree trunks, and perhaps a childlike sense of invention. The composition found across the group of panels is repeated in the later artist’s book Neues Buch (2014–15).

The use of the home as symbol for shelter as well as the reimagining of figurative forms finds prevalence in the work of French-born artist Louise Bourgeois. In Bourgeois’ early drawing Femme Maison (1947), a nude female wears a house over her head and torso, hiding facial her features but allowing her arms to extend downward and outward. While the anthropomorphized home here hints at a critique of defined gender roles, Galli’s work suggests ambivalence, moving between a safe and protected space, one that also evokes the motif of a prison.