almost CURATORS » Carlotta Nobile

Artherapy – Kandinsky Project

Carlotta Nobile — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 11:39:49 +0000

Starting from a major artist’s artwork in order to create an art therapy project which mingles the expressive power of color with the strength of sound. That’s the aim that the American Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital in Grand Rapids, Michigan, has been achieving for two years through the “Kandinsky Project”, a wide art therapy program inspired by the famous Russian painter, Wassily Kandinsky, with the goal of producing artworks created by young patients who have cognitive or physical impairments. More than 1,500 artworks have been created during last two years, within a re-discovery of the specific kandinskyan artistic style and listening to the music of the beginning of the XX century, connecting art-therapy, music-therapy and educational creativity.

www.helendevoschildrens.org

Lui chi è?? – Valerio Rocco Orlando

Carlotta Nobile — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 21:11:29 +0000

Valerio Rocco Orlando, born in Milan in 1978, received a BA in Dramaturgy from Università Cattolica in Milan and a MA in Film Directing from Queen Mary, University of London. Constantly balancing between an intimate portrait and a choral dialogue, through film, photography and installation, Valerio Rocco Orlando’s community-based projects focus on the relation between individual and collective identity in order to explore and enhance the complexity of human relationships in contemporary society. Conceived as a gift, as an enriching element of interchange, Valerio Rocco Orlando’s art can be considered as the realm of reciprocity, multiculturality, knowledge of the other as knowledge of the self. His art is strictly linked to education and interweaved to daily life and society. It’s a poetic which becomes politics, (“personal is political”,says his green neon light), but not just according to ideological criteria that simply divide right from left wing. It’s a policy of emotions, of shared experiences, of different cultures that meet and mingle on the ring of artistic expression, the best mean to express individuality through community and vice versa. That’s how personal becomes political, recalling the slogan women used to spread in the 70s. “I talk about personal in order to talk about the whole social system”, Valerio asserts.
Achieved for his first solo show in an art gallery, the seven-channel video installation “The Sentimental Glance” by Valerio Rocco Orlando is an outstanding mosaic of feminine voices and glances, and elegant plot composed by six stories which represent the artist’s sentimental education through a deeply intimate approach, reflecting on tensions and connections between childhood and adulthood, passion and loneliness, maternity and androgyny. Six women tell their own stories, giving the title to every single video: Celeste (2002); Rita (2003); Eva (2004); Dobrochna (2005); Amalia (2006); Eleonora (2006). Six heroines to focus the gaze on; six women whose voices and stories darken any redundant detail, any possible out-field. Sounds merge in moving images, accompanying without invading, in a never-ending osmosis with these intense feminine existences.
Bisiàc (2007) is a two-channel video installation, a timeless short story which takes place on the shore of Isonzo river, in Northern Italy. It’s the first chapter of a cycle about the relations between new generations and the local dying languages and traditions. Two aged five twins, a boy and a girl, are the main characters of the video, paddling across the river and playing with stones along the shore. Dressed un traditional local clothes, the two children declaim nursery rhymes in their own language, the old venetian dialect, as in contrast with the evolution of contemporary society, establishing an osmotic and sinesthetic relationship with water.
Dialogue, listening, other’s awareness, sharing and reciprocity are just some of the main themes in Valerio Rocco Orlando’s work. That’s where the video project “Lover’s Discourse” starts from. It began in 2010, when the artist posted flyers round Brooklyn, in New York, asking for “couples and lovers” to collaborate in his new video installation. Along with his website and email address, Valerio made the short message even more charming, including a quote by the French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy: “There is no being without being-with and there is no existence without co-existence.” Then he chose the most enthralling stories he felt would best contribute to the project, creating narratives that become a visual web of relationships, through interchange and sense of community.

“Coexistence” is a neon light produced by Valerio Rocco Orlando in 2010,
the artwork that gave the title to the artist’s first solo show at Tiziana Di Caro Gallery in Salerno (Southern Italy), two years ago. Love, reciprocity, sharing and interweaving of stories, lives and experiences (themes Valerio is particularly fond of) come back in this neon artwork through the quote “Il n’y a pas d’existence sans coexistence”, from an essay of the famous French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy, handwritten by the artist’s partner. Coexistence represents a focus on individuality and collectivity, a light pointed on the value of sharing, as in a mirror game, and traces an artistic and social poetic based on the sublimation of existence, between personal experience and its amplification through community.
“Endless” is an open artwork, without any end, actually. It’s an artist’s book in limited edition, published in its first two volumes by Valerio Rocco Orlando. It’s a full spectrum piece of art that is composed over time through sharing and comparison. A collaborative project, which starts from the question “What forms of relationship do you think can improve society?”, posed by Valerio to internationally renowned writers and artists who have influenced his own artistic research. The first answers are those by Maria Paola Fimiani, Gilbert&George, Liam Gillick, Corrado Levi, Jean-Luc Nancy, Mario Perniola, Ugo Rondinone and Luigi Zoja, through a methodology which is not that far from the making of a video or an installation.
“Education” is, without any doubt, an other leading keyword in Valerio Rocco Orlando’s artistic production. Through a series of workshops conducted in some high schools in Italy in 2011 with the support of Nomas Foundation and in Cuba in 2012 as part of the XI Bienal de la Habana, the artist gave birth to an interesting and kaleidoscopic community-based project, through a comparison between different educational international systems and an artistic approach to alternative models of knowledge’s transmission. As the philosopher Bruno Latour, in his book “Laboratory Life” analyzes scientific discoveries through the study of the relationships between the scientists and their families, in the same way Valerio leads a survey on different public school-system through interviews to students themselves. Being sure that educating means constructing the self in relationship with others, projecting the self in space and community that surround us.

Artherapy – Nature Trail

Carlotta Nobile — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 12:05:38 +0000

Sometimes art therapy meets design too. That’s the case of the interactive installations created and produced by Jason Bruges Studio at the Great Ormond Street Hospital in London. The brief was to design an artwork accompanying children in a calming yet engaging route towards the operating room, conceiving it as a “Nature trail” (title of the installation), where the hospital walls become a natural canvas with digital look out points made by 70 led panels revealing various forest creatures, including horses, deer and birds. The installation, which mingles art, design and art therapy, is composed by led panels embedded into the wall surface at various heights in order to be accessible to the eye levels and positions of patients traveling along the corridors, stimulating a concrete interaction which is highly appreciated by young patients.

www.gosh.nhs.uk
www.jasonbruges.com

Artherapy – Artist-in-Residence

Carlotta Nobile — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 11:56:35 +0000

Artists in residence? Nowadays almost every single museum or contemporary art institution hosts them in order to give birth to original and site-specific projects. But what happens when the “Artist-in-Residence” program has an hospital as main location? That’s the case of the unique American project of The Creative Center, housed at the NYU Medical Center, where artists in residence create collaborative activities which tend to lighten patients’ souls, together with their family members and the whole staff. Artists’ main duty is to involve patients in artistic projects, helping them express themselves creatively through workshops and participatory artworks. And if somebody doesn’t feel well enough to actively participate, he/she may direct the artist in creating a piece of work!

Artherapy – Impression, soleil levant

Carlotta Nobile — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 11:33:52 +0000

Sometimes art, architecture and art therapy meet each other. That’s what happens for the facade of the Johns Hopkins Medical Center in Baltimore, projected by American artist Spencer Finch, based on studies of reflection and absorption of natural colors in water. The final composition is abstract but references the impressionist pigment perception, Monet water lily paintings and the colors of a wisteria tree. 25,000 square meters of 26 different colors which are not – according to the artist – just the exterior of the building, but contribute to create generous conditions of natural light in order to warm and lighten the souls of employees and patients. Even colors were not chosen by chance, as the artist spent months testing a wide range of colors in order to find the palette that would best fit the tone of Baltimore’s daytime sky.

www.hopkinsmedicine.org

Artherapy – Jeff Koons for RxArt

Carlotta Nobile — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 11:24:53 +0000

Of course hospitals aren’t exactly the most pleasant places on Earth, especially beyond the doors of testing rooms where no one is allowed to accompany patients, not even the youngest. To make these places slightly less hostile for children, non-profit american organization RxArt has decided to promote the installation of some of Jeff Koons’ most famous artworks in the scan rooms of the Advocate Hope Children’s Hospital in Oak Lawn, Illinois. Going on through its leading aim of installing contemporary artworks in hospitals, the RxArt organization has dedicated its energies to the section of pediatric radiology, utterly wrapping scanner rooms and machines (painted in blue) in images of some of Koons’ most iconic works, from the Hanging Heart from the Celebration series to the Ballon Dog, from Monkeys to Donkey. That’s how scanner rooms have been transformed into brighter and more relaxing places in order to make those infinite minutes inside the “tube” seem as short as possible.

www.rxart.net

Artherapy – A seno nudo

Carlotta Nobile — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 11:21:16 +0000

It could be considered as an illustrated diary focused on the return to “normal life” for 14 breast cancer survivors who began smiling again. The Italian book “A seno nudo” (ed. Tecniche Nuove) places itself half-way between a photographic catalogue and a collective autobiography of women of different age and profession, reporting their experiences and portraying them in the beauty of a renaissance. It’s a new wellbeing which starts from those scars.
The book represents the interesting meeting point between the medical contribution by the plastic surgeon Cristina Garusi, the interviews made by journalist Anna Di Cagno and the black and white shots by Isabella Balena. A way of remembering that images tell a story and telling their own story could lead patients through an useful and healthy rehabilitation path.

www.tecnichenuove.com

Artherapy – The battle we didn’t choose

Carlotta Nobile — Sat, 22 Dec 2012 10:38:27 +0000

Some stories need to be told. That’s how art traces paths and stimulates thoughts, changing perspectives and reminding ourselves that creativity generates emotions. And emotions could end up being the greatest treatment.
Angelo Merendino is an American photographer. “The Battle We Didn’t Choose” is the project he’s been deeply dedicating himself to for about five years.
When in 2007, just five month after their marriage, his wife Jen was diagnosed with breast cancer, Angelo decided to witness and share all the daily battles of the young woman against cancer, through his camera. Jen herself asked her husband to document every single phase of her battle against “the beast”, every single change of that body that all at once had become betrayer, in order to prove herself and her relatives how much strenght is necessary to fight the battle that, without being chosen, chose her.
All frustrations and small successes becomes shots of life in order to make relatives and friends understand the hardest aspects of cancer, in a growing sharing and understanding which emerges from every single pictures, from every single moment recorder in a dimension which lacks of rethoric or self-commiseration.
“My pictures are not just about cancer”, says Merendino. “They tell about love and life, about never giving up. They have the purpose of making people understand that every second must be lived deeply”.
The numerous shots of this intensive and breathtaking project will be exhibited in Washington in January 2013, but Angelo’s main dream is to bring them worldwide, overtaking all the prejudices of the public, who is partially not ready to face such a sincere and objective report of the illness yet.
A photographic story that, through memory, becomes therapy for the soul, interiorizing and at the same time universalizing a drama which is closer and closer to all of us.
Jen unfortunately passed away more than one year ago, but this is absolutely the best way to remember her struggle.

www.mywifesfightwithbreastcancer.com

Artherapy – Artistic and Therapeutic Laboratory

Carlotta Nobile — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 10:56:38 +0000

It’s unanimously believed that creative activities improve patients’ physical and psychological wellbeing, involving the sphere of phantasy and emotions and emerging in the dynamic form of a pictorial gesture. That’s why LILT (the Italian Association for the Fight against Cancer) has lately been organizing a series of activities gathered under the name of “ArtLab – Artistic and Therapeutic Laboratory” in order to soothe the deep wound of the soul caused by cancer. Different activities are being proposed, from art to dance, from manual creativity to music-therapy… Painting on canvas and shaping different materials, patients are being involved in a stimulating visual, emotional and sometimes even spiritual path, in order to lighten the dark period of therapies, bringing a smile and re-generating the projectuality that ill people tend to loose.

www.legatumori.it

Artherapy – Dynamo Camp

Carlotta Nobile — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 10:40:04 +0000

“Smile and look at children as children, not as ill people: they’ll be grateful to you”. That’s Dynamo Camp’s starting point, a full spectrum recreative therapy project, destined to children affected by oncologic and other rare pathologies. Artistic laboratories, workshops and other open-air activities represent the leit motiv of this special dimension based on creativity, within a WWF oasis close to Pistoia. The aim is “to make young patients feel a little bit ill and much more light-hearted”, with entertainment activities which stimulate creativity in order to improve emotional conditions, to call a halt to the self-isolation generated by the knowledge of being ill and to predispose the body at reacting to cures in a more concrete way. Art, beauty, nature and creativity… And maybe also the drama of the illness could be more endurable.

www.dynamoartfactory.org