e-publication designed by Studio Vanessa Ban© Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore 2018
Finding a title for this exhibition has been hard; there was for a moment The abstraction of the art object (2017–2065) but I am no Lucy Lippard and it sounded like I was setting out to write a treatise. Then there were Satellite dreams, Dancing satellite and a brief Star Wars reprise, The last satellite, until eventually the satellite was shut down.
Caterina Riva 2018
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Haji Widayat (Indonesia) Wild Orchids in the Forest 1985, oil on canvas
Early morning and the fog pouring into the valley like a river. The hills a shade of emerald so dark that they are almost black. The gently rustling ferns, the wood-plank walls, the water dripping off the roof in beads of light—everything seemed to be drawing breath. She emerged from her sleep as if coming out of a cocoon, opened her eyes into the blooming of things. Through the window she could feel the crisp bite of the wind, see the fog enveloping everything as if the clouds were descending from above. For a moment she closed her eyes. Suddenly the sound of marbles falling onto the roof. When she opened them again the world had whipped itself into a storm.
Janet Lilo, Your tree, ongoing photographic series
The local bar was about a 15 minute run away. I ran there because I was late trying to figure out the coordinates at the hotel where I left you, sick in bed.
Have you ever travelled in time to an imaginary place where disparate famous architectures coexist by the placid waters of a lake? Have you ever seen someone else’s living room in a black and white photograph, distant as a memory yet as close as a family member? A lush velvet curtain becomes a portal transporting you to sculptures in Russia or the Trump Towers in India, amid flowers, foliage and clouds appropriated from Italian art history.
Read and view more on: http://moussemagazine.it/big-towers-institute-contemporary-arts-singapore-2017-2018/
Francesca Grilli, Gold, site specific performance. Library of the American Academy, Rome, 2015
“[…] As the drama of female consciousness in the world; as an attempt to interrupt the dream that man has of woman in order to dream himself; as the possibility of relationships now freed, even if traumatized, from the realm of silence.” (1)
In this precise historical moment, to reflect on what it means to be a woman seems to harbor connotations whose implications are, to say the least, problematic. It does so, in part, because we are still prisoners of a stage in which the male gaze is the one that judges and the only one adopted by the mass media. In a 1973 essay, film theorist Laura Mulvey indicated the tendency of Hollywood movies to reduce the woman to a sexual function or otherwise to a virginal figure of salvation, ever passive with respect to her instrumentalization in male narrative. (2)
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Alex Cecchetti, Le chevalier, table, 4 chairs enzo mari autorpogettazione, woodcut, prints, menu with poems, 2017, from “Tamam Shud” at Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw. Photo: Pat Mic
Quando si incontra Monsieur Cecchetti spiccano i suoi occhi castani: guizzano, si illuminano, ridono. Il corpo tracima energia e le mani e la testa si muovono con foga, accompagnando le sue narrazioni. La voce, allo stesso tempo stentorea e melliflua, porta con sé influssi della sua esistenza nomade tra Italia, Francia e Inghilterra, in un prisma di lingue e di aggettivi, che prendono sfumature diverse in base al contesto linguistico in cui ci si trova. In questi anni Alex Cecchetti ha realizzato libri, sculture, collage, coreografie, performance, riviste, tarocchi…, ma continua a scartare ogni definizione e tentativo in ingabbiarlo in un genere o in uno stile.
Ex-cinema Lietuva, Vilnius, Lituania. Foto di Caterina Riva, 2016
Ultimo giorno a Vilnius. Cammino tra le strade acciottolate della città vecchia fino al ponte sul fiume che mi porta alla zona moderna: grandi supermercati Maxima, grattacieli con l’insegna gigante di una banca svedese… Ho in mente la direzione, l’ho controllata sul portatile prima di lasciare l’albergo ma ora non sono così sicura delle distanze e mi perdo un po’. Invece di costeggiare il fiume salgo verso una strada più in alto e mi ritrovo davanti a un edificio immenso, di era sovietica, che pare un’arena sportiva. Avvicinandomi, noto che lo spazio intorno è vuoto e pieno di erbacce, alcuni vetri sono rotti, altri ricoperti da graffiti; è decisamente abbandonato.
Questo testo è stato scritto per The Towner ma mai pubblicato. Continue reading
