ConTAMinAzione

Palazzo della Ragione Mantua retrospective exhibition by the artist Vania Elettra Tam organized by Frattura Scomposta of contemporary art

By Frattura Scomposta contemporary art

Frattura Scomposta contemporary art

Contamination - Vania Elettra Tam - Palazzo Ragione Mantova - Italy (2015 - 2015) by Vania Elettra TamFrattura Scomposta contemporary art

Palazzo
della Ragione - Piazza delle Erbe - Mantua ConTAMinAzione

Curated by Carlo Micheli

from January 21st to  February 26th 2017

Opening January 21st at 5 p.m.

Palazzo della Ragione - Piazza delle Erbe - Mantua

From January 21st Palazzo della Ragione host a retrospective exhibition of Vania Elettra Tam, offering an extensive overview about her production, from works created in 2006, to

get to the large painting inspired by Mantegna that the artist has painted specially to pay homage to the city of Mantova.

The exhibition, curated by Carlo Micheli, analyzes, for the first time in Italy, almost the entire artistic career of the Como paintress, grouping ninety works, including paintings and drawings, belonging to 10 different artistic cycles.

This operation was made possible thanks to the help of private collectors and art galleries,

as Arte Investimenti of Milan, Arte Orizzonti of Ostuni, Nardi Arte in Rome and Woland Art in Trieste, with which the artist  has been working lately.

ConTAMinAzione Palazzo della Ragione Mantova - Solo Show Vania Elettra Tam - 2017 (2017 - 2017) by Vania Elettra TamFrattura Scomposta contemporary art

Not without a hint of irony constantly and subtly present, Vania Elettra Tam always

focuses on anxiety caused by frustration, which causes the need to create

changing needs (often totally unnecessary) and that drives individuals to seek solutions

daring to solve non-essential issues.

The use of the self-same, distinctive feature of the artist's work, becomes more and more an excuse to break down in her "finite size" (that of everyday life, encapsulation in space

closed in which you are forced to spend most of our existence) and its

dimension "infinite" (to brake the schemes and disobedience to the rules).

A banal and everyday domestic interior can be transformed into Alice's mirror? The irrational

madness that eats humus life of the imagination is the prerogative of artists or inventors,

or perhaps, in all of us, even in the most ordinary housewives situations, it lies a flash of genius, an indefinable desire to escape that takes us beyond our physical rational dimension?

Vania with her sharp sign that touches the hyperrealistic style suggestions, tries to give an answer to these questions and, with an intelligent and sophisticated use of painting, explores the hidden desire of evasion that is hidden in each individual.

A succession of Women symbol, crossing the threshold of reality and solitude to domestic

embark on a journey to a undefined and coveted "beyond".

ConTAMinAzione Palazzo della Ragione Mantova - Solo Show Vania Elettra Tam - 2017 (2017 - 2017) by Vania Elettra TamFrattura Scomposta contemporary art

Ironic images but also suffered loneliness invade the spaces of Palazzo della

Ragione, to create a sharp and disenchanted fresco of a particular and at times forgotten

feminine aspect of reality in contemporary society.

Vania Elettra Tam was born in Como in 1968. she lives and works in Milan.

In her works the irony and seduction overlap with a veiled social criticism but from mild gaze,

fun and surreal.

Selected solo exhibitions “OKO 10” Šibenik City Museum Croazia; “Il giro del mondo in 30 m²” Roma;

“Kanon – regole ferree” Trieste; “Filoillogica” and “Doppia mentiS” Ostuni; “Un giorno di ordinaria pulizia” and “Cronaca Rosa” Milano.

Collective exihbition : “54° Biennale di Venezia” Palazzo Te Mantova; “Cibi Condimentum Esse Famem” Milano;

“Aliens - Le forme alienanti del contemporaneo” Casa Ludovico Ariosto Ferrara; “Plurale Femminile” Piacenza;

“Coexist – Eight different kind of fantastic art” Lecce; “Iside Contemporanea” Museo Arcos Benevento;

“Un’altra storia” San Carpoforo Milano; “Aquisizioni” Museo Parisi Valle Maccagno; “Perturbaciones” National

Museum of Fine Arts L’Habana Cuba; 

ConTAMinAzione Palazzo della Ragione Mantova - Solo Show Vania Elettra Tam - 2017 (2017 - 2017) by Vania Elettra TamFrattura Scomposta contemporary art

“Art Basel Mania” Miami USA; “Artists & Authors” San Diego Art Institute USA; “Meeting of young Italian artists” Giacomo Casanova Palace Praga CZE; “Book Art Project” Baglioni Hotel London UK. Of her work they have written: Edoardo Di Mauro, Ivan Quaroni, Igor Zanti, Alessandra Redaelli, Franche-Marri, Vincenzo Giulio Farachi, Ferdinand Crete, Iva Körbler ... Her personal in Trieste was presented by internationally renowned critic Edward Lucie-Smith.  Her works have been published in numerous books on art, literature and fiction. Recent examples: "The great tale of Ulysses "by Pietro Boitani and" The big story of the classical myths "by Maurizio Bettini published by Il Mulino. Vania Elettra Tam CONTAMINATION Mantua, Palazzo della Ragione - Piazza delle Erbe January 21st to February 26th, 2017 Opening January 21 at 5 p.m. Free entry Info: T: 0376 1505892 Infopoint T: 0376 288208 Hours: Tuesday to Sunday 10am-1pm and 3pm-6pm Monday closed Exhibition catalog Press office: Fracture scomposta Contemporary Art Magazine info@fratturascomposta.it - www.fratturascomposta.it

Contamination - Vania Elettra Tam - Palazzo Ragione Mantova - Italy (2015 - 2015) by Vania Elettra TamFrattura Scomposta contemporary art

Tap to explore

Contamination - Vania Elettra Tam - Palazzo Ragione Mantova - Italy (2015 - 2015) by Vania Elettra TamFrattura Scomposta contemporary art

Presentation of the Mayor of Mantua

I could appreciate the work of Vania Elettra Tam thanks to one of her works on display

at the Venice Biennale in 2011, in Mantua Palazzo Te. It was a large painting, depicting a housewife precariously above on a tensioned cable over a row of supermarket trolleys, holding a stack of egg boxes. The title struck me: "suspended", a play on words that gave the work a double meaning, ironic and winking. CONTAMINATION, the retrospective exhibition that she devotes to Mantua, is certainly not less for the quality of the works presented and the subtle and pleased irony that distinguishes them.

I was really impressed by the painting specially created for the exhibition in Mantova, self-representation in key hyperrealist of Tam busy sprinkle the oculus of the Bridal Chamber of Mantegna, as if to emphasize the disproportion that exists between the masterpiece and her playful and mocking interpretation. A quote, a contamination if you prefer, wants be a tribute to the great artist and the city of Mantua, fully in the spirit of Vania Elettra Tam, valuable artist and lover of puns and double entender, of which we decided to share the ACTION.

The Mayor of Mantua Mattia Palazzi

ConTAMinAzione Palazzo della Ragione Mantova - Solo Show Vania Elettra Tam - 2017 (2017 - 2017) by Vania Elettra TamFrattura Scomposta contemporary art

Presentation of the curator Carlo Micheli

Realism does not mean to bring art back into reality. It means transport the reality in art;

not only to accept the vicissitudes of life but elevate them.

Laurence Olivier

I look at the first draft of "contamination" and comes me to mind the parallel between this Spreader of masterpieces and Charles Edouard Jeanneret, l ' " the one who walks away" of crows. But is it true that Le Corbusier eager to take credit for this pseudonym alluding to the man who drove the crows from homes? And if so, it was a choice dictated by humility or

the arrogance of being the architecture savior, the one who protected her from

“pigeon droppings” of crackling disfuguerers winged? Certainly Vania, in the painting that gives the title to this exhibition, is depicted as a domestic worker busy dusting the camera picta, with a real duty of humility profession. The idea that in the role of an artist is intent symbolically to remove the spiderwebs from the art of the past, in fact, it goes against her vis ironica indeed, primarily self-deprecating. Tam includes it in her paintings for a choice of responsibility, to share the neuroses of his characters, to affirm their membership in the category of housewives frustrated, the couch potatoes, the compulsive goers of the supermarkets, the dreamers from gravure, of incurable gullible, the warriors of everyday life. And 'its a "Let us arm ourselves and start", never an "arm yourselves and leave."

ConTAMinAzione Palazzo della Ragione Mantova - Solo Show Vania Elettra Tam - 2017 (2017 - 2017) by Vania Elettra TamFrattura Scomposta contemporary art

To lend their likeness to the characters of her paintings she does not make herself as a hero, but a woman multiplied, able to live deeply all the experiences of her role, digging in herself, revealing dreams and needs, passions, expectations, disappointments, weaknesses and determination. One senses, in this great fresco artaudiano, in this daily theater of cruelty, that the protagonist is the woman in her complexity and not the one who lends her image to make more credible the narration. We do not even touch the idea that there is a Vania / Barbie in a hundred different versions: all lead back images to a much broader concept, custom, even abstract, where the housewife, the dreamer, the frustrated, the career woman or the domestic worker are nothing but the same woman, with many facets that belong to herself, an intriguing woman, naive and bewitching, demure and shameless, a varied summary of femininity. As in a mad kaleidoscope images are doubled and recompose, presenting infinite variables, winking and venial provocations, naive or shameless, puns, double meanings that are followed in an irresistible whirlwind of contamination with literature, cinema, comics, Renaissance art, puzzles, the glossies.

ConTAMinAzione Palazzo della Ragione Mantova - Solo Show Vania Elettra Tam - 2017 (2017 - 2017) by Vania Elettra TamFrattura Scomposta contemporary art

The everywoman Vania Elettra Tam clings to the dream, the fantasy, the sensitivity to the peculiar qualities of the woman, to escape the monotony of everyday life: an ironing board becomes a surfboard with which dizzying ride waves; great aspirations come to mind when you grab a vacuum cleaner; the lady with the broom, worthily replaces the ermine; while the shape of a chicken on the floor projecting our friend in an intriguing thriller, directly at the crime scene. No shortage shy and distant ladies(but only in appearance) of origami clitoral, or housewives sexy disturbing Gossip, surrounded by sex toys used in the most inappropriate ways, to pretend naive forgotten. Abnormal appears Kanon cycle - regoleferree where the ladies represented are trapped in strange torture mechanisms that secure their mouth, eyes, nose with some sort of chastity belts for the head, living witnesses of coercion and restriction of personality, where 'irony gives way to a less veiled social criticism than other cycles. But as always, talking about Vania Elettra Tam, lets not forget to emphasize the skill, rare graphics capabilities, the originality of the sign ... And 'the fate of those who have something to say and knows externalize with their art: the end there is such a perfect symbiosis between what everyone is and how is, that we focus not to measure the individual components of the work, as saying that the graphics is taken for granted in a display that resembles a script, in works visual that are in fact stories. In Vania is a clash: it is as if the mind defied his hand to realize their thoughts more complex and bizarre, but noone can ever be won in a draw without end that is the most precious gift and the less burdensome condemnation for Vania.

Carlo Micheli

ConTAMinAzione Palazzo della Ragione Mantova - Solo Show Vania Elettra Tam - 2017 (2017 - 2017) by Vania Elettra TamFrattura Scomposta contemporary art

Contamination - Vania Elettra Tam - Palazzo Ragione Mantova - Italy (2015 - 2015) by Vania Elettra TamFrattura Scomposta contemporary art

ConTAMinAzione Palazzo della Ragione Mantova - Solo Show Vania Elettra Tam - 2017 (2017 - 2017) by Vania Elettra TamFrattura Scomposta contemporary art

ConTAMinAzione Palazzo della Ragione Mantova - Solo Show Vania Elettra Tam - 2017 (2017 - 2017) by Vania Elettra TamFrattura Scomposta contemporary art

ConTAMinAzione Palazzo della Ragione Mantova - Solo Show Vania Elettra Tam - 2017 (2017 - 2017) by Vania Elettra TamFrattura Scomposta contemporary art

ConTAMinAzione Palazzo della Ragione Mantova - Solo Show Vania Elettra Tam - 2017 (2017 - 2017) by Vania Elettra TamFrattura Scomposta contemporary art

ConTAMinAzione Palazzo della Ragione Mantova - Solo Show Vania Elettra Tam - 2017 (2017 - 2017) by Vania Elettra TamFrattura Scomposta contemporary art

ConTAMinAzione Palazzo della Ragione Mantova - Solo Show Vania Elettra Tam - 2017 (2017 - 2017) by Vania Elettra TamFrattura Scomposta contemporary art

ConTAMinAzione Palazzo della Ragione Mantova - Solo Show Vania Elettra Tam - 2017 (2017 - 2017) by Vania Elettra TamFrattura Scomposta contemporary art

ConTAMinAzione Palazzo della Ragione Mantova - Solo Show Vania Elettra Tam - 2017 (2017 - 2017) by Vania Elettra TamFrattura Scomposta contemporary art

ConTAMinAzione Palazzo della Ragione Mantova - Solo Show Vania Elettra Tam - 2017 (2017 - 2017) by Vania Elettra TamFrattura Scomposta contemporary art

ConTAMinAzione Palazzo della Ragione Mantova - Solo Show Vania Elettra Tam - 2017 (2017 - 2017) by Vania Elettra TamFrattura Scomposta contemporary art

ConTAMinAzione Palazzo della Ragione Mantova - Solo Show Vania Elettra Tam - 2017 (2017 - 2017) by Vania Elettra TamFrattura Scomposta contemporary art

ConTAMinAzione Palazzo della Ragione Mantova - Solo Show Vania Elettra Tam - 2017 (2017 - 2017) by Vania Elettra TamFrattura Scomposta contemporary art

ConTAMinAzione Palazzo della Ragione Mantova - Solo Show Vania Elettra Tam - 2017 (2017 - 2017) by Vania Elettra TamFrattura Scomposta contemporary art

ConTAMinAzione Palazzo della Ragione Mantova - Solo Show Vania Elettra Tam - 2017 (2017 - 2017) by Vania Elettra TamFrattura Scomposta contemporary art

ConTAMinAzione Palazzo della Ragione Mantova - Solo Show Vania Elettra Tam - 2017 (2017 - 2017) by Vania Elettra TamFrattura Scomposta contemporary art

ConTAMinAzione Palazzo della Ragione Mantova - Solo Show Vania Elettra Tam - 2017 (2017 - 2017) by Vania Elettra TamFrattura Scomposta contemporary art

ConTAMinAzione Palazzo della Ragione Mantova - Solo Show Vania Elettra Tam - 2017 (2017 - 2017) by Vania Elettra TamFrattura Scomposta contemporary art

ConTAMinAzione Palazzo della Ragione Mantova - Solo Show Vania Elettra Tam - 2017 (2017 - 2017) by Vania Elettra TamFrattura Scomposta contemporary art

ConTAMinAzione Palazzo della Ragione Mantova - Solo Show Vania Elettra Tam - 2017 (2017 - 2017) by Vania Elettra TamFrattura Scomposta contemporary art

ConTAMinAzione Palazzo della Ragione Mantova - Solo Show Vania Elettra Tam - 2017 (2017 - 2017) by Vania Elettra TamFrattura Scomposta contemporary art

ConTAMinAzione Palazzo della Ragione Mantova - Solo Show Vania Elettra Tam - 2017 (2017 - 2017) by Vania Elettra TamFrattura Scomposta contemporary art

ConTAMinAzione Palazzo della Ragione Mantova - Solo Show Vania Elettra Tam - 2017 (2017 - 2017) by Vania Elettra TamFrattura Scomposta contemporary art

ConTAMinAzione Palazzo della Ragione Mantova - Solo Show Vania Elettra Tam - 2017 (2017 - 2017) by Vania Elettra TamFrattura Scomposta contemporary art

ConTAMinAzione Palazzo della Ragione Mantova - Solo Show Vania Elettra Tam - 2017 (2017 - 2017) by Vania Elettra TamFrattura Scomposta contemporary art

ConTAMinAzione Palazzo della Ragione Mantova - Solo Show Vania Elettra Tam - 2017 (2017 - 2017) by Vania Elettra TamFrattura Scomposta contemporary art

ConTAMinAzione Palazzo della Ragione Mantova - Solo Show Vania Elettra Tam - 2017 (2017 - 2017) by Vania Elettra TamFrattura Scomposta contemporary art

ConTAMinAzione Palazzo della Ragione Mantova - Solo Show Vania Elettra Tam - 2017 (2017 - 2017) by Vania Elettra TamFrattura Scomposta contemporary art

ConTAMinAzione Palazzo della Ragione Mantova - Solo Show Vania Elettra Tam - 2017 (2017 - 2017) by Vania Elettra TamFrattura Scomposta contemporary art

ConTAMinAzione Palazzo della Ragione Mantova - Solo Show Vania Elettra Tam - 2017 (2017 - 2017) by Vania Elettra TamFrattura Scomposta contemporary art

ConTAMinAzione Palazzo della Ragione Mantova - Solo Show Vania Elettra Tam - 2017 (2017 - 2017) by Vania Elettra TamFrattura Scomposta contemporary art

ConTAMinAzione Palazzo della Ragione Mantova - Solo Show Vania Elettra Tam - 2017 (2017 - 2017) by Vania Elettra TamFrattura Scomposta contemporary art

Contamination - Vania Elettra Tam - Palazzo Ragione Mantova - Italy (2015 - 2015) by Vania Elettra TamFrattura Scomposta contemporary art

Contamination - Vania Elettra Tam - Palazzo Ragione Mantova - Italy (2015 - 2015) by Vania Elettra TamFrattura Scomposta contemporary art

Credits: Story

Thanks for contributing to the realization of retrospective contamination artist Vania Elettra Tam, held at the Palazzo della Ragione in Mantova



The City of Mantova, the Department of Culture and exhibitions office.


The curator and organizer of the exhibition Carlo Micheli


The PubliPaolini publisher of Mantua for the realization of the catalog


For Mossini carpentry and Manfredini Plaques

For the preparations Francis Alberto Gutera

For Azzoni lighting Electronics


For the management and custody Verona 83



We thank for the texts in the catalog and in the exhibition: Loredana Barillaro, Sergio Curtacci, Flavia Lanza, Amelì Lasaponara, Franche-Marri, Carlo Micheli, Mattia Palazzi (mayor of Mantova), Ivan Quaroni, Alessandra Redaelli and Igor Zanti



The photographers for their services Fernanda Pavirani and Marco Besana


We thank Giancarlo Marcali for translations of texts from Italian into English

Credits: All media
The story featured may in some cases have been created by an independent third party and may not always represent the views of the institutions, listed below, who have supplied the content.
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