Where and when
From
To
Museo Novecento
Altre sedi
On the occasion of the Green Line festival, the Museo Novecento presents WONDERFUL! a project born in 2020, aimed at recounting the most recent developments in art in Italy by giving voice to a generation of new artists, their languages and their gaze on the contemporary.
The exhibition will open to the public on December 8 in the Sala d’Arme and on December 9 at the Museo Novecento.
Exhibition Hours
Museo Novecento
Monday – Sunday
11:00 am
–
8:00 pm
Thursday
Confirming its commitment to enhancing the new generations of artists, this year WONDERFUL!, now in its third edition, is linked to the themes at the heart of the Green Line festival, such as climate change and sustainability, and presents a double solo show, curated by Stefania Rispoli with the artistic direction of Sergio Risaliti, dedicated to the two young artists Camilla Alberti (Milan, 1994) and Anouk Chambaz (Lausanne, 1993), located between the Sala d’Arme of Palazzo Vecchio and the Museo Novecento.
The works exhibited in the two locations – including sculptures, videos, drawings and embroideries – thematize the ongoing ecological and social crisis, imagining new scenarios starting from the overcoming of anthropocentrism, from the observation of nature and from the dialogue between different species. If art can help define a future horizon for the planet, it does so by acting as a social catalyst, sensitizing our consciences. The artists thus investigate, through their practice, the complexity of our being on Earth, placing the relationship with the other at the center in an ecosystem logic where strictly environmental problems are interconnected with social and ethical ones, with the relationship between self with the other.
The works exhibited in the Sala d’Arme arise from a rereading of the past of this place, once the headquarters dedicated to the guardhouse and armory of the Palace. Camilla Alberti thus deploys an army of sculptures in the center of the space, hybrid and alien creatures imagined to survive the confines of reality, which are part of a research that combines the observation of contemporary ruins with the mythological and fairy-tale imagery of monsters . In The Adoubement: Ceremony for Extremophile Bodies, through a process of ‘urban archeology’, the artist recovers abandoned objects or industrial waste to assemble them together with natural elements (such as shrubs and trunks) and other materials (including aluminum and plaster) creating alienating, sharp and intricate figures, at the same time at the same time repelling but fascinating, proceeding regardless of our presence.
Also in the spaces of the ancient armory of Palazzo Vecchio, Anouk Chambaz presents a video installation entitled Le Sentinelle, eleven portraits of children placed on guard of a mysterious treasure, immersed in an at times deafening silence. As frontier characters, children are the guardians of our future and in their calm they observe us, turning their faces to the present. They stand, resist, demonstrate and scream. It is difficult to remain indifferent, their innocent gaze becomes subversive, ready to challenge the boundaries defined by adults to enter the realm of magic beyond rationality, imagining and demanding a future.
The exhibition continues inside the rooms of the Museo Novecento, where Camilla Alberti presents a series of embroideries made with multi-head industrial machines. Connecting to the textile tradition of the family – which has been running an embroidery factory in the province of Varese for over thirty years – the artist creates works inspired by the vegetable and fungal world, focusing on the processes that go through them and the organisms that inhabit them. Observing the organization, flexibility, adaptability and co-existence of these ecosystems can only raise questions about what intelligence, dialogue and life really are.
A subtle and poetic language characterizes the artistic production of Anouk Chambaz, which leads us to reflect on the complex relationship between the fascination for wild nature and our hidden desire to be able to tame beauty. Marica – water nymph and animal lady – is the portrait of Donatella di Cola, born as a beekeeper and then became a butterfly breeder after one of them attacked the habitat of her bees. Instead of fighting the parasite, the breeder makes it the engine of a new experience, transforming a failure into an opportunity. A strong bond unites the woman to her insects. These are carefully cared for and protected to safeguard their extinction, yet like every demiurge Donatella decides their life cycle: the eggs hatch, the caterpillars lose their skin and the chrysalis transform only when she decides to let them grow in her laboratory. like a modern Frankenstein.
A dialogue that intends to emphasize ecology, sustainability and climate change, through the gaze of two young female artists who are protagonists, for the first time, in Florence.
Camilla Alberti
(Milan, 1994) works on the ways in which the world is constantly built and inhabited, paying attention to the relationships between the different living species and the space that surrounds them. After graduating in Visual Arts and Curatorial Studies at NABA, she has exhibited in Italy and abroad in numerous museums, galleries and cultural centers including recently: Approach#1, MLZ Art Dep & Wiener Art Foundation, Trieste (2022 ); AnimalAmongAnimals, Spazzapan regional gallery curated by Gabi Scardi and RAVE (2022); AlterEva, Palazzo Strozzi (2021); Archeology Museum Schloss Eggenberg, Graz (2021); Plymouth Contemporary, Plymouth University (2021); Impermanence, Ipercubo Gallery (2020); To young sculptors, Villa Necchi (2019); Swamp School, Lithuanian Pavilion, Venice Architecture Biennale (2018); Residences: Styria-Artist-in-Residence, Graz (2021); NAHR, Val Taleggio (2021); House of Artists, Milan (2020/2021); Neuro_Revolution by Air Trieste (2019). She was the winner of the Cantica21 public announcement. Italian Contemporary Art Everywhere – Under 35 Section, promoted by MAECI-DGSP / MiC-DGCC and was selected by Hyundai Europe for the #inspiredbybayon launch campaign of the new vehicle (2021). His works have become part of the Farnesina Collection, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Rome; of Nctm for Art, ADVANT Nctm, Milan and of the Corneliani Collection, Milan-Mantova.
Anouk Chambaz
(Lausanne, 1993) works with moving images and sound creating works that explore the relationship between life forms and landscape. She studied cinema at ECAL, Lausanne, philosophy at Sapienza, Rome, and Moving Images Arts at IUAV, Venice. In 2020 she won the scholarship for international artists at Castro Projects in Rome. In 2022 she participates in the Prender-si cura residency program at Mattatoio, Rome and is one of the 6 finalists of ArteVisione Lab curated by CareOf, Milan. She is a finalist of the Cramum prize, the Malamegi Art Lab prize and the Artkeys prize, she gets a special mention at the Carapelli for Art prize and wins the video section of the Combat prize. Among the most recent exhibitions are: Bolzano Art Weeks (Bolzano), Burning Speech (Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin), Ersilia (Macte Digital, Termoli), Manifasta (Macro, Rome), Extreme Elastics (Estuario Project Space, Prato) , A View From The Cliff (BALENO, Rome), Istabsir (Sound Corner n°52, Auditorium Parco della Musica, Rome), Vilnius International Film Festival, Contemporary Jewish Museum (San Francisco).
Installation View
