VENICE.- Chiara Camoni’s Con te con tutto brings the spaces of the Italian Pavilion to life at the 61st Venice Biennale, promoted by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture. The exhibition, curated by Cecilia Canziani, is a call to come together, an invitation to build a different way of being in the world through encounter and sharing with other forms of life, leaving room for wonder, feeling, dialogue, contemplation and the flow of time that transforms everything.
The exhibition is comprised of works created specifically for the exhibition and existing works, according to a combinatorial practice of reuse and reinterpretation that the artist has previously deployed—an approach inherent to the very nature of her work. The familiar elements of the artist’s work are joined here by new ones: recycled plastics, industrial refuse and found objects are brought together to depict the contemporary landscape, inviting us to recognise beauty even in waste.
The first space houses a silent thicket of figures: twenty-four sculptures dotting the dimly lit space. They are Colonne, Sisters and Daimons: anthropomorphic figures which establish a direct dialogue with the bodies of the visitors. Facing the entrance to the Pavilion, they appear to be part of a single grouping. Shaped from coiled clay or composed of a myriad of small terracotta elements that give form to bodies in potential metamorphosis, they appear in the semi-darkness like minor deities.
The second space comes then into view, composed of natural elements, artefacts and recycled objects that continue and expand the artist’s exploration of matter. On either side are two large groups of works consisting mainly of marble floors and sculptures of a domestic form, created using items of furniture pieced together hosting the pieces from the Dialoghi section: a series of works entrusted to Lucia Aspesi and Fiammetta Griccioli, which link Camoni’s work with other artistic languages, chronologies and figures, including Fausto Melotti, Alberto Martini, Marisa Merz, artefacts such as an amphora dating back to the end of the seventh century BC, objects and two previously unseen commissions: by choreographer and dancer Annamaria Ajmone, Canti fossili, and Che cosa resta, produced by filmmaker Alice Rohrwacher.
The Italian Pavilion is accompanied by a public programme developed by Angelika Burtscher and Daniele Lupo (Lungomare).
The Italian Pavilion, promoted by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture, was also made possible thanks to the support of its main sponsor ZEGNA and sponsor Banca Ifis, along with the contribution of numerous donors.
Commissioner: Angelo Piero Cappello, Director-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture. Curator: Cecilia Canziani. Artist: Chiara Camoni.
