almost CURATORS » 2012

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

Zoom – Shizuka Yokomizo

Serena Silvestrini — Sat, 22 Dec 2012 10:06:08 +0000

Dear Stranger, I am an artist working on a photographic project which involves people I do not know. I would like to take a photograph of you standing in your front room from the street in the evening. A camera will be set outside the window on the street. If you do not mind being photographed, please stand in the room and look into the camera through the window for 10 minutes on __-__-__ (date and time)…I will take your picture and then leave…we will remain strangers to each other…If you do not want to get involved, please simply draw your curtains to show your refusal. I really hope to see you from the window.

Shizuka Yokomizo is the author of this letter. She is a Japanese photographer born in Tokyo in 1966 who currently lives and works in London. From the positive responses to this message shots collected in the project “Strangers” were born: photographs taken from 1998 to 2000 in Berlin, Tokyo, New York and London as metaphors of modern human relationships and as symbols of the distance between each of us. The author chose who, what and where to take these pictures simply considering the availability of a window on the ground floor of the house. The decision to respond to this bizarre request, that doesn’t reveal a clue about the purpose and the recipients of the image, is a metaphor for the confidence that each of us feels toward the others. The force of this idea is a new relationship which is established between the photographer and the subject: there is no type of bond, report, contact between the two of them. The acceptance of this “authorized privacy violation” also highlights how nowadays our intimacy and privacy are no longer necessary conditions.

Affordable Art Fair: not cheap/very cool

Pia Lauro — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 19:10:56 +0000

Somebody might think that this is a cunning way to overcome current periods of crisis. The Affordable Art Fair actually is a very well conceived and structured project that for fifteen years has been collecting successes around three continents.

In 1999 Will Ramsay, founder and CEO of Affordable Art Fair in the world, launched the first Affordable Art Fair in Battersea Park, London, where approximately 10,000 visitors took advantage of the ease of purchase, the choice of works and friendly approach! But 2001 was the turning point year for AAF. In 2001 Will Ramsay launched a second event, the Spring Collection, in order to expose completely different artists compared to the ones proposed during the Autumn Collection. Since then, the AAF has become a global phenomenon with fairs that take place in more than fifteen cities in the world and during the last year it has registered very high numbers despite the crisis: 200,000 visitors for more than 1,250 galleries and a turnover around 33 million euros.

What makes this phenomenon interesting, though, are not only numbers, but the need to make the market of art accessible to a growing number of people, from a cultural and economic point of view, underlining the words of the artist William Morris – I don’t want an Art for a few people, not more then how I want an education freedom for a few people. Offering visitors the chance to buy a work because they like it and not because it should be purchased, Will Ramsay free the potential buyer by immobilising the ‘performance anxiety’ that too often accompanies the potential contemporary art users and buyers; and provides a simple ‘buying art guide” for those who take the first steps, in order to support them since the beginning.
It seems therefore clear that the main objective of the AAF project is to form an aware and enthusiastic band of buyers, who begin to buy works at an affordable price, not to chase the dream of a large collection in a cheap style, but because they know that time has come to live in contemporary art, not simply watching and leaving just a few people such a fun!

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

Lui chi è?? – Pietro Ruffo

Emanuela Pigliacelli — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 10:20:52 +0000

Pietro Ruffo was born in 1978 in Rome, where he now lives and works.
After studying architecture at Roma Tre University, in 2010-2011 he gained a research fellowship at Columbia University in New York.

Ruffo’s art is essentially linked to the basic elements of his architectural training: design, paper and drawing. All his works actually are the result of a meticulous planning close to details, and take shape on the sheet through a delicate but incisive sign. However, they don’t retain the two-dimensionality of a table because paper, carved, gains the third dimension. The result is a stratified work, with multiple visual and semantic readings that investigate the great themes of universal history, in particular individual freedom and dignity constantly threatened by massification underway in contemporary society.

With the installation Das Chinesische Reich (2007), the artist put the attention on what that he defines “ Chinese empire”: an impressive pyramid composed by boxes of goods from China represents the power of commercial dynamics that crush workers under the weight of exploitation. Inside the pyramid, infact, was made a niche wherein a video shows the condition of displaced persons and refugees attempting to cross the frontier to escape. Complete the title a quote from the book “Gomorra” by Roberto Saviano: “Goods have all the rights of movement that no human being may ever have”.

In artworks like Youth of the Hills (2008) he expresses, instead, the contradiction that you breathe in the territories of the Middle East conflict: a swarm of beetles covers a Second World War German panzer reproduced on scale. Insects have been carved on pages of Jewish prayers without destroying the integrity of the texts, sacred in the Jewish culture, and emerge from the work as if they were released from the sand, their natural habitat. The beetle is a symbol of strong religious affiliation of the people, because of the dramatic territorial dispute.

The same theme is tackled in the exhibition Un istante complesso (2009), curated by Ludovico Pratesi, at the Centro Arti Visive Pescheria of Pesaro. Protagonists are six large flags of the states in perennial conflicts: Israel, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Hamas. The flag, Pop symbol par excellence, was deprived of color that leaves its place to a graphic texture, dense overlapping of animal skulls: aggression, violence and death, but also stratification of people in their territory.

In his last works acquires great importance the theme of freedom, becomed almost a constant in his research.
During his residence in New York in 2010, Pietro Ruffo had the opportunity to meet young philosophers and artists from all over the world, and ask them questions about the notion of liberty. In this way was born Atlas of the various freedoms (2010-2011), a real geographic atlas wherein territories and faces overlap to form an audio-visual mapping of this universal concept, inspired by the thought of Isaiah Berlin.The installation is so composed by graphite portraits of this people and their interviews that can be listened through headphones that hang from above.
In other artworks the ideal of liberty is embodied by the dragonfly, insect carved and repeated on the intere installations’ surface. Is the case with Negative Liberty (2011) and Liberty House (2011), site specific installations that, as in a baroque trompe l’oeil, transform close locations in forests, finely drawed by pencil or painted in ink wherein the observer is immersed, almost like in a secret garden.
In Revolution Globe (2011) the dragonflies are carved, instead, on a large world map in paper, evoking the individual’s liberty to move without boundaries or restrictions: a direct reference to the revolutionaries episodes of the Arab Spring, caused by the absence of individual freedoms and human rights violations.
In World Spring (2012) the artist inserts on a geographical world map, single Arabic words (democracy, tyranny, peace, blood, etc.) extracted from the slogans used by protesters during the Arab Spring. Every word, painted in gold leaf, cut and placed in relief, is framed in a geometric pattern inspired by Islamic tiles. The result is an abstract network that covers the globe and symbolically connects distant and different regions and countries. A visual and conceptual metaphor of the web, the communication tool through which new generations of Egyptians, Tunisians, Libyans, Yemenis, Syrians, have been in contact to organize and disseminate the revolutionary events.

Artherapy – Ioedio

Carlotta Nobile — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 09:41:28 +0000

“Ioedio”, which took place two years ago in Verona, was not just a simple exhibition. It was an humanistic art-therapy path meant for patients who had recently exited coma and were able to communicate through patterns and colors in order to regain a part of themselves. About ninety artworks made by patients were the interesting product of a conscious rehabilitation path. A true celebration of the power of artistic expression, used more and more together with traditional rehabilitation therapies, with the aim of regaining the abilities owned before the trauma, avoiding the post-coma confusion and stimulating a deeper self-confidence regarding feelings and emotions.

fase3
www.ilfiorediloto.it
www.periagoge.it

Lui chi è?? – Francesca Romana Pinzari

Pia Lauro — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 12:10:28 +0000

Francesca Romana Pinzari, roman artist, was born in Perth (Australia) in 1976? She started her career in 2001 as figurative painter.
She has been recently going through an artistic research regarding body and the identity phenomena in contemporary society: using different media such as videos, performances and installations, her work is developing in the form of self-portraits that tell universally known concepts in which everyone can recognize himself.
Her own body is conceived by Francesca as a place of experimentation, on which, with which and through which she tends to explore the relationship between intimacy and sharing. In a continuous relation of antinomy between different elements put into connection between themselves, works such as Chimere (2012) were born. They are ethereal sculptures, fruit of a patient manual work that combines the fragility of horsehair with the resistance of a metal structure. Between myth and history, between utopia and reality, chimeras are looming, materializing in ancestral individual memories and and in the hybrid result of their own uncertainties. Chimera actually is a mythological monster, but at the same time it’s an impossible desire, an illusion, an absurdity.
Nevertheless it’s in works such as Hair Majesty (2011) or in the series made on plexiglass that Pinzari reveals the intimacy and the consistency of an organic element such as hair. What at first sight in Hair Majesty seems to be a pattern in china, actually is a work entirely made of the portraited subjects’ hair, a feature that creates a direct link with the represented people far beyond the visual similarity, as a sort of extension of the same body. Hair interweave as a slight frame recalling the subject’s spiritual thoughts, as a filter of separation of the material and the instinctive from spirit and soul. Hair creates intimate and interior figures also revealing pure eroticism.
On the other side, to tell about herself Francesca chooses plexiglass and hair. The dark wires outline a clear and emblematic shape. It’s a fetus, located upside down as in a young pregnant woman’s uterus close to delivery, and at the same time fixed and locked in plexiglass, as a sort of conservation case. In these works the artist leaves a trace, a test: her DNA.
After an acute survey on human body, Francesca Romana Pinzari has focused her work on the concept of identity, stressing the need to reflect on the difficulty to define who we are in relationship to a society that tends to allocate individuals for political, cultural, religious, physical group membership, incorporating the individual in the whole community.
That’s how works as Bestiario (2011) are born. On aluminum plates monstrous creatures take shape, composed of parts of existing animals and fantastic beasts that emerge as the anguish and anxieties of contemporary human beings from the inscrutable depth of a dark background. Or Cavalli (2012), approximately 150 small pictorial works which at first sight seem similar to each other in color intensity and smudges, but which are actually all different from one another. Unique and unrepeatable figures are dictated by the hand of the artist and the randomness of the used techniques. Each image is unique and serial at the same time, just like the individuals who inhabit the contemporary society, unique individuals, for history or culture, that tend to embrace each other for a pure sense of aggregation.
But can belonging to a group, a movement or a faith actually influence and distort the identity of the individual? Francesca Romana Pinzari thinks it can’t. The artist tells us about her point of view through the images I am not (2011), video of the performance presented during a session of performances within the review organized by the Yes Foundation (the Netherlands) last year. According to Francesca each individual tries to satisfy his own sense of belonging by embracing philosophies, religions and political parties, but in reality the individual can’t do anything in the group and it is precisely from this awareness that shows his own frustration towards the contemporary system.

Artherapy – Des Seins à Dessein

Carlotta Nobile — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 09:00:48 +0000

Two years ago the Espace Arlaud in Lausanne was still hosting the exhibition “Des Seins à Dessein”, a varied and disparate mosaic of artworks (from painting to photography, from jewelry to video-art) entirely dedicated to a careful consideration on the theme of breast cancer, which strikes more and more women worldwide. About thirty artists (from Pipilotti Rist to Christoph Zellweger, from designer Sophie Hamagarth to video-artist Judith Albert) have been invited to explore, through their own artistic production, the various implications of this emotional wound bound never to heal, with the only aim of raising funds for research. Another display of the great power of art, being able to analyze, sensitize and – at least emotionally – sometimes even heal.

www.musees.vd.ch

Artherapy – Open Source Cure

Carlotta Nobile — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 20:36:49 +0000

Salvatore Iaconesi is an Italian artist, hacker and interaction designer who has been teaching digital arts and cultures in several universities worldwide. Nothing special, to this extent. But Iaconesi has been recently diagnosed with brain cancer and decided to crack and make his digital medical records downloadable by everyone. “Open Source Cure” is the precise naming Salvatore uses for his project, specially meant for doctors and scientists who could give him medical advice, but also addressed to artists, designers, hackers, photographers, video makers, musicians and writers. “There are cures for the body, for spirit, for communication”, writes Iaconesi. “Anyone can give me a cure”. That’s art therapy too.

www.artisopensource.net