Where and when
From
To
Museo Novecento
New appointment with the video exhibition, conceived by Beatrice Bulgari for In Between Art Film and curated by Paola Ugolini for the cinema room of the Museo Novecento.
Exhibition extended until Sunday 16 February
The new exhibition, entitled Survival strategies (27 September 2019 – 16 February 2020), collects the works of seven international artists – Hiwa K, Santiago Sierra, Regina José Galindo, Maria José Arjona, Mary Zygouri, Shadi Harouni, Masbedo – which reflect on our present, tragically torn by bloody conflicts, racial hatred and religious feuds fueled by economic and geo-political interests.
The exhibition opens with The Bell Project (2007.2015) Iraq-Italy by Hiwa K (Sulaymanyya, Kurdistan, 1975), an artist who began his career in his native country as a figurative painter. Although he now lives in Berlin and has stopped painting, he has maintained a realistic attitude in his practice that reverberates in his most recent production. The video traces the realization of the project presented by Hiwa K at the 2015 Venice Biennale, where he exhibited a large bell, made with the fusion of metals recovered during the Iran-Iraq conflict (1980-1988) and both the Gulf Wars ( 1991, 2003), adorned with bas-reliefs representing some Mesopotamian works of art destroyed by ISIS. As in an alchemical experiment, as the metal of the weapons of war melts and takes on a new form, all the deadly din of war is transformed into a sound of peace and hope.
This is followed by Palabra destruida (Destroyed word) (2010-2012) by Santiago Sierra (Madrid, 1965), who for almost thirty years has been making video works and performances, moving on the impervious terrain of criticism of the socio-political conditions of the contemporary world. Uncomfortable messenger of the dark truth of our time, Sierra puts his finger on the plagues of contemporary society by denouncing the exploitation of labor, inequality and discrimination. In this 10-channel video work Sierra stages the physical destruction of the ten letters that make up the word Kapitalism. Each letter, built with different materials, was made in a different geographical location and then destroyed giving life to ten performances.
This is followed by Palabra destruida (Destroyed word) (2010-2012) by Santiago Sierra (Madrid, 1965), who for almost thirty years has been making video works and performances, moving on the impervious terrain of criticism of the socio-political conditions of the contemporary world. Uncomfortable messenger of the dark truth of our time, Sierra puts his finger on the plagues of contemporary society by denouncing the exploitation of labor, inequality and discrimination. In this 10-channel video work Sierra stages the physical destruction of the ten letters that make up the word Kapitalism. Each letter, built with different materials, was made in a different geographical location and then destroyed giving life to ten performances.
Maria José Arjona (Bogotà, 1973) in the video Linea de Vida (2016) also uses her body as a dynamic tool to reconnect the viewer to the mystery of nature and its intrinsic strength. The artist, sinuously moving in the narrow horizontal space between the floor and the thousand glass bottles hanging from the ceiling with as many nylon threads, gives them a rhythmic wave motion that visually recalls that of the sea and artificially recreates the crystalline murmur of the flow of water to evoke a state of primitiveness. The artist physically disappears from sight to leave room for experience, so as to bring the viewer back to the poetics of the intimate relationship with nature.
In the video Venus of the Rags / In transit / Eleusis (2014), the Greek performer Mary Zygouri (Athens, 1973) instead uses Michelangelo Pistoletto’s Venus of the Rags to compose a surreal story, shot in Elefsina (Eleusis), a sadly exemplary city of a wicked urban stratification that clashes with the archaeological ruins of its glorious past. This goddess ‘in transit’, in search of a new location, becomes the symbol of the transition condition of Elefsina herself, in her attempt to relocate and culturally recontextualize the place, communities and identities. Taking up some characteristic elements of her work, the artist also uses her own woman’s body as an instrument for a political discourse (personal and collective), capable of absorbing “the vibrations of the human and urban architectural environment”.
Another female artist, Shadi Harouni (Hamedan, Iran, 1985), is the author of the following video The Lightest of Stones, shot in a stone quarry in Kurdistan where a group of men, confined to that inhospitable place due to their political ideas, discuss ISIS, legends and American sexy divas like Jennifer Lopez. The artist with his bare hands digs the earth to extract the stones, turning his back to the group of men who between the serious and the joking continue to chat with each other, also questioning the meaning of the physical and illogical action that the girl is carrying out .
Closing the review is Glima (2008), by the duo Masbedo (Nicolò Massazza, Milan 1973, Iacopo Bedogni, Sarzana 1970), who stages, with great scenographic and narrative effectiveness, the tragedy of incommunicability and the difficulty of relationships of a man-woman couple, inspired by an ancient traditional Icelandic national struggle used to resolve disputes between villages. In the blinding whiteness of Icelandic ice, in a hostile nature indifferent to human dramas, a man and a woman tied by long black leather ropes, reminiscent of the nine-tailed cats of Sado-maso practices, collide and face each other in a fight without quarter that will leave neither winners nor losers on the field. Violence therefore seems to be the only feeling that continues to bind the two human beings who, panting, drag themselves into the macabre dance of oppression.
Concep by Beatrice Bulgari for In Between Art Film
Curated by Paola Ugolini