AlbumArte has hosted a number of performances, some of which have played an integral and exegetic part of exhibition projects, as did the workshops that proceded the performances and led to their creation.
Grossi Maglioni | Campo Grossi Maglioni
“Campo Grossi Maglioni” (15 febbraio – 27 aprile 2017) mostra personale del duo Grossi Maglioni (Francesca Grossi e Vera Maglioni) a cura di Lýdia Pribišová e Gianluca Brogna, è stata inaugurata il 15 febbraio 2017 negli spazi di AlbumArte con una performance sonora di Acchiappashpirt (Stefano Di Trapani e Jonida Prifti). La mostra, costruita attraverso la rielaborazione di tre progetti artistici sviluppati e approfonditi nell’arco di dieci anni di attività, delinea il processo di work-in-progress che sottende da sempre la ricerca di Grossi Maglioni. Il duo artistico, fin dal suo esordio, ha dedicato una parte sostanziale della propria ricerca alle pratiche performative, attraverso le quali ha indagato differenti argomenti di natura sociale e politica, combinando la metodologia della ricerca artistica con quella antropologica, scientifica, con incursioni nella magia e nella parascienza, senza mai escludere un approccio femminile e femminista agli argomenti e ai lavori da loro elaborati. Le artiste, infatti, si focalizzano spesso su tematiche politicamente scomode: lo sguardo che offende, le occupazioni, le serate spiritiste con il corpo femminile usato come oggetto dell’operazione. Tutti e tre i progetti sono incentrati sull’idea di opera come dispositivo che innesca interazioni e collaborazioni sia tra le artiste che con il pubblico. Le installazioni sono state affiancate, infatti, da attività performative e workshop che hanno reso la mostra un ambiente vivo e in continua mutazione. L’intenzione è far diventare il visitatore il partecipante, l’occupante attivo degli spazi. Il progetto ha ricevuto il patrocinio dell’Assessorato alle Attività Produttive, Cultura e Sport del Municipio II di Roma Capitale. Si ringrazia la Fondazione Catel per aver supportato parte della produzione delle opere. Il progetto si è avvalso della collaborazione dell’Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma e Vision Forum.
Occupazioni, Tenda dell’accudimento (2017) by Grossi MaglioniAlbumArte
The show must be understood as a village, a camp, an agora that originates from the central installation dedicated to "Occupazioni", a research initiated in 2014.
"Occupazioni, Tenda dell’accudimento", composed of drapes and painted curtains secured with ropes, proposes a model of a nomad camp – specifically a tent for childcare – and investigates the relationship between basic and ancestral necessities of life and the act of organizing a common space.
Occupazioni, Tenda dell’accudimento (2017) by Grossi MaglioniAlbumArte
During the workshops, the installation, in fact, was modified by the interactions of the participants, who were encouraged by the artists to build a new “shelter/occupation”.
Occupazioni, Tenda dell’accudimento (2017) by Grossi MaglioniAlbumArte
The workshops had a narrative form: each of these meetings became the chapter or stage of a story, traces of which can be read in the time between one action and another.
Lo sguardo che offende, Target-kit (2017) by Grossi MaglioniAlbumArte
The laboratory that activated the installation "The gaze that offends" was dedicated to the students of the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome. The work is made of a number of devices similar to weapons with optical pointers, deriving from a reflection on visual devices and on gaze’s ability to ‘hurt’ the observed landscape.
Campo Grossi Maglioni, exhibition view (2017) by Grossi MaglioniAlbumArte
The workshop ended with a performance held on March 16th, 2017 in the main hall of AlbumArte.
Campo Grossi Maglioni, exhibition view (2017) by Grossi MaglioniAlbumArte
On April 27th 2017, the exhibition ended with a performance relized together with the artist Per Hüttner, founder of Vision Forum, an international research platform for performing arts, science and technology based in Sweden, of which Grossi Maglioni is part since 2008.
Eglė Budvytytė | Choreography for the Running Male
In collaboration with the Mondriaan Fonds, MAXXI – Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo and the Lithuanian Culture Institute, AlbumArte has produced the site-specific performance “Choreography for the Running Male” by the Lithuanian and Dutch by adoption artist Eglė Budvytytė (1981). The performance, which took place at MAXXI on Saturday October 14th, 2017 was part of the Museum program for the 13° Giornata del Contemporaneo AMACI and it has received the patronage of the Embassy of the Netherlands in Rome and the Embassy of the Republic of Lithuania to the Italian Republic.
Choreography for the Running Male, performance, short clip (2017) by Eglė BudvytytėAlbumArte
“Choreography for the Running Male” is characterized by a mobile and dynamic structure that changes and further develops every time it is presented in a new environment. Nine performers, in a silent march, ran along the streets of the Flaminio district, starting from MAXXI square, performing unusual gestures in extreme firmness and composure, similarly to a military unit, where control and rigidity are fundamental requirements. The performance also conveys ideas of guilt, seduction and disguise. The artist’s work wants to reflect on the physical and psychological pressure to which men were subjected during the years of the Soviet Union, while at the same time challenging conventions that still portray man as always strong and self-confident.
Long Time Between the Eyelash and the Brain, exhibition view (2017) by Eglė BudvytytėAlbumArte
The performance was part of Eglė Budvytytė’s solo exhibition, “Long Time Between the Eyelash and the Brain” (September 19th - November 11th, 2017), curated by Benedetta Carpi De Resmini at AlbumArte. The show presented for the first time in Italy a selection of video-works that, as in “Choreography for the Running Male”, explore the role of the individual in relation to wider reflections on collective society. Going beyond the documentary format, through her videos and her performances the artist gives life to real poetic statements that challenge conventional behaviors and regulations implicit within the public space.
Las Mitocondria |
Hysteria. De SecretisNaturae
The exhibition “Hysteria. De Secretis Naturae”, featuring works by the Spanish duo Las Mitocondria (Alicia Herrero and María Ángeles Vila Tortosa), curated by Paola Ugolini, opened on June 5th 2018 with a double performance of the artists at AlbumArte.Started the action together in the small room displaying with the two works “Útero”, the two artists then continued the action separately. Used to differentiate and combine their artistic practices - dance for Alicia and visual arts for Maria Angeles - for the exhibition the two artists realized various works and actions with the intention to create a choral work that reflected on the theme of hysteria as a stereotypical female pathology.To speak today of Hysteria may sound anachronistic but the term acquires relevance when used in reference to the female world, and in particular to how the medical and psychiatric sciences, which are disciplines that until thirty years ago were considered inviolably male domains, have exploited not only these symptoms but the whole female body in general, to support the thesis that the only function of women was purely that of biological reproduction. Through the delicate engravings of María Ángeles Vila and the dance-performance of the dancer and choreographer Alicia Herrero, the exhibition aimed at accompanying the visitor inside the female body, defining a strong esoteric parallel between natural elements and organs, within a holistic view by which human nature is intimately connected with natural elements. The exhibition has been realized in collaboration with the Real Academia de España en Roma and the Accademia Nazionale di Danza. AlbumArte wishes to thank IRI Real Estate | Vendite e Investimenti Immobiliari.
Hysteria. De Secretis Naturae, exhibition view (2018) by Las MitocondriaAlbumArte
At the center of the main room a large wooden box created a kind of theatrical atmosphere, where Alice Herrero performed a dance during the opening day.
Hysteria. De Secretis Naturae, performance (2018) by Las MitocondriaAlbumArte
For the artist, this giant envelope becomes the conceptual and formal representation of hysteria and the contortions that Alicia performed inside this cramped space, which could be watched the public through the peepholes, recreated the spectacular atmosphere, often on the verge of licentiousness, that characterized the sadly famous “Tuesday lessons” held by the neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot, at the Salpêtrière, the Parisian psychiatric hospital in the late nineteenth century.
Behind the thick walls of the ship of fools that was the Salpêtrière, with over five thousand patients, the representation of female madness was staged for many years with hysterics as privileged actresse and Charcot as the great demiurge-director-scenographer, who “invented” or rather “re-invented” the canon of hysteria with its dramatic theatricality, also thanks to the new technology of photography. Many well-known clinicians of the time were terrified by the mystery of the female psyche, by the obscure cavity of the womb and by the uterus, capable of generating new lives. Therefore, these doctors would only voyeuristically observe the mental illness in its devastating animality and under these inhumane mise-en-scène, that fostered and nourished the spread of this false pathology.
Quei che dipingi lì (det.) (2018) by Las MitocondriaAlbumArte
The walls of the exhibition hall were deliberately filled with works by María Ángeles Tortosa (Valencia, 1978), creating a sort of aesthetic horror vacui to highlight the redundancy of the scenic representation of hysteria.
Hysteria. De Secretis Naturae, performance (2018) by Las MitocondriaAlbumArte
Another performance by María Ángeles Vila Tortosa took place in the adjoining room that became a sort of second open box in which the visitor experienced an immersive action.
De Secretis Naturae (2018) by Las MitocondriaAlbumArte
In the inside of the box were placed numerous light boxes, with depictions of the four elements (air, water, earth, fire) took from the iconographies of the 18th century arch of the village of Rivodutri in Sabina, Lazio, an arch also known as the “alchemical gate”. The elements are also connected with human organs (heart, liver, brain, intestines, lungs, kidneys) so transforming them into symbols of an esoteric exploration that aims at the union between body and spirit.
Hysteria. De Secretis Naturae, performance (2018) by Las MitocondriaAlbumArte
The play of volumes created by the artist on the walls of the ‘box-room’ becomes a metaphor that represents both the body and the mind.
Hysteria. De Secretis Naturae, exhibition view (2018) by Las MitocondriaAlbumArte
As part of the project, the artists realized a workshop at the Real Academia de España en Roma with the students of the National Dance Academy on June 4th that lead them to the making of a performance at AlbumArte in the first weeks of July.
Texts: Cristina Cobianchi, Alice Isabella Leone, Lýdia Pribišová, Paola Ugolini
Translation: Fabiola Fiocco, Carolina Gatti
Photo: Eleonora Ambrosini (Las Mitocondria, Hysteria. De Secretis Naturae,
performance, 5th June, 2018), Sebastiano Luciano
Video: Matteo Pisapia
Coordination: Fabiola Fiocco, Alice Isabella Leone
Project management: Cristina Cobianchi
Coordination projets, exhibitions and performances at AlbumArte: Valentina Fiore
We would like to thank from the bottom of our hearts everyone who contributed to the making of this project and also everyone who shared their knowledge with us.
