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exhibition
BLINDNESS
October 24. 2020 – January 31, 2021
Georgie Friedman (USA)
Sissa Micheli (Austria)
Margarida Paiva (Portugal)
Charlotte Thiis-Evensen (Norway)
Muratcentoventidue Artecontemporanea
Bari, Italy
BLINDNESS
GEORGIE FRIEDMAN • SISSA MICHELI • MARGARIDA PAIVA • CHARLOTTE THIIS-EVENSEN
October 24 2020 – January 31, 2021 [extended from Dec 15]
Reception: Saturday, October 24, 2020 | 7:00 PM
Muratcentoventidue Artecontemporanea
via Murat, 122/b - 70123 Bari, Italy
Georgie Friedman (United States) is an interdisciplinary artist whose projects include large-scale video installations, single and multi-channel videos and several photographic series. She is interested in our psychological and societal relationships to mild and severe natural phenomena. She investigates a wide range of powerful atmospheric and oceanic conditions, and is fascinated by the power of these natural elements in relationship to human fragility. She utilizes photography, video, sound, installation, engineering and the physics of light, all in order to create new experiences for viewers.
In the Wake of Icebergs is a video diptych that ranges from iceberg details to vast seascapes of icebergs moving out to sea. The icebergs become both literal and metaphoric representations of Antarctica's shrinking perimeter. In the Wake of Icebergs pairs incongruous seascapes to allude to the fracturing of the environment, and to highlight the enormous amount of sea and landscape that cannot be seen within the frame.
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Sissa Micheli is a South Tyrolean artist, Viennese by adoption, her expressive research moves between still and moving image, rigorously dosing installations, videos and photos.
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Margarida Paiva (1975, Portugal) is a visual artist living in Oslo working with film and photography. Her films have been shown widely in exhibitions and international festivals. For many years her work related to stories of isolation, trauma, memory and displacement. These stories emerged in poetic narratives defined by an existential solitude. Recent work focuses on the human bond with other living beings, like plant and animal life. This interest in nature has a spiritual dimension which is inspired by ancient animist beliefs in which plants, animals and places all possess a distinct immaterial essence. These works engage in the exploration of diverse forms of coexistence between human and nonhuman animals by questioning the idea of human exceptionalism in relation to its biological environment.
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Charlotte Thiis-Evensen is a Norwegian filmmaker, visual artist, journalist and program director. As an artist she works with documentarism in video, photo and installations. In her works she touches on close family relationships, everyday rituals, cultural histories and issues related to identity.
She uses new media to create unique and empathetic human narratives. She utilizes a form of documentary based on the lived experience of named individuals, often working from the artist's own circle of acquaintances, community members, or children and teenagers. She is interested in producing work that explores questions of personal freedom. Several of her artworks are about how unspoken power structures affect the individual.
Muratcentoventidue-Artecontemporanea
Via G. Murat 122/b – Bari
next to Corso Vittorio Veneto and Svevo Castle.
HOURS
Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday only by appointment
From Thursday to Saturday 5.30 - 8.30 pm
CONTACT
3348714094– 392.5985840
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EXHIBIT PRESS
"Quattro artiste in allarme Cecità, male del tempo," Pietro Marino, La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno, Bari, Italy, Oct 30, 2020
"'Blindness,' ciechi davanti all'agonia del pianeta," Marilena di Tursi, Corriere del Mezzogiorno, Bari, Italy, Oct 23, 2020
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Georgie Friedman (b. 1974, United States) is an interdisciplinary artist whose projects include large-scale video installations, single and multi-channel videos, sculpture, site-specific public art projects, and several photographic series. She researches and bases her projects on a range of atmospheric and oceanic conditions, with a concentration on how these natural elements are changing in relation to the Anthropocene. Friedman has been based in Boston since 2005, exhibiting nationally and internationally, and has traveled to five continents, including Antarctica, to film for her projects.
Her fellowships and awards include: Artist Traveling Fellowship to Antarctica (SMFA/Tufts, 2017); two Mass Cultural Council grants, Sculpture/Installation Fellowship (2013) and Film/Video Finalist (2019); Boston AIR, City of Boston Artist-in-Residence (2016); two A.R.T. Grants, Berkshire Taconic Foundation (2010; 2019); Montague International Travel Grant: Iceland (2008); Barlet Travel Grant: Alaska (2007), along with commissions for over fifteen video-based public art pieces.
Screenings, public art projects, and exhibits include: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA (solo, 2019); Georgetown University, DC (solo, 2019); The Geneva International Film Festival, Switzerland (2017); The Cleveland Museum of Art, OH (2016); Muratcentoventidue Artecontemporanea, Bari, Italy (2018; 2019; 2020); Boston City Hall – exterior, MA (2017); Union College, NY (solo, 2016); Shelburne Museum, VT (2016); Lesley University College of Art and Design, MA (solo, 2015); College of the Holy Cross, MA (solo, 2015); Transylvania University, KY (2013); and The Armory Center for the Arts, CA (2013); deCordova Sculpture Park & Museum, MA (2010).Friedman's work has been featured in The Boston Globe, The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, NPR, CBS News, The Atlantic, Orion Magazine, among many others. She earned her M.F.A. from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts /Tufts University, and her B.A. from University of California, Santa Cruz. Friedman is currently a Lecturer in the Art, Culture and Technology program at MIT, and her previous teaching appointments include: Boston College, Massachusetts College of Art and Design, and Lesley University College of Art and Design.
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Sissa Micheli was born in 1975 in Brunico, lives and works in Vienna.
From 1994 to 2001 he studied English and Roman Studies at the University of Vienna, where from 2000 to 2002 she attended the school of artistic photography. Then she graduated from the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. The meeting with Louise Bourgeois in New York was decisive in 2006. From 2007 to 2011 she was a teacher at the summer academy of Fine Arts in Venice. Sissa Micheli has been awarded numerous awards and scholarships, including the Vienna Academy Award in 2008 and the Pagine Bianche d'Autore Award, Milan, in 2006 the New York scholarship in 2008, the London and Paris scholarship in 2009 and 2013 and the Austrian state scholarship for artistic photography in 2015. Her work is present in many private and public collections.
She has numerous solo and group exhibitions both in Italy and abroad, including 2020 LUMEN, Brunico (IT), Alessandro Casciaro Gallery (IT), 2019 Maribor Photography Festival (SL), Palais Mamming Museum, Merano ( IT), Oberösterreichischer Kunstverein Linz (AT), 2018 Galleria Sturm & Schober Vienna (AT), Transart Bolzano (IT), 2017 Sotheby's Quarterly Palais Wilczek, Vienna (AT), 2015 Kunsthalle Saalfelden (AT), 2014 Austrian Cultural Forum London ( GB), Museion Bolzano (IT), 2014 Künstlerhaus KM–, Halle für Kunst & Medien, Graz (AT), 2013 Merano Arte (IT), 2011 Künstlerhaus Vienna (AT), 2011 Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (AT), 2009 Fotoforum West Innsbruck (AT), 2008 MUSA Startgalerie Vienna (AT).
Among the group exhibitions: 2020 Museion, Bolzano (IT), 2019 Kunsthaus Kollitsch, Klagenfurt (AT), Künstlerforum Bonn (DE), Boccanera Art Gallery, Trento (IT), Antonio Dalle Nogare Foundation, Bolzano (IT), Musée National Dolomites, Paris (FR), Biennale Gherdeina VI, Ortisei (IT), Haus der Kunst, Baden (AT), 2017 Museum of Kymenlaasako Kotka (FIN), Kunstverein Kärnten Klagenfurt (AT), 2016 Kajaani Art Museum (FIN), Fotogalerie, Vienna (AT), 2015 Kunsthalle Bratislava (SK), Kunst Haus Wien, Vienna (AT), Galleria Luciano Fasciati, Chur (CH), 2013 Audain Gallery, Vancouver (CND), 2012 Scope Miami International Contemporary Art Show, Miami (USA) , 2011 Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris (F), 2010 Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz, (A), Parliament, Vienna (AT), Kunstverein Freiburg (DE), 2009 Galerie 5020, Salzburg (AT), Museion Gallery, Bolzano (IT) , Spazio Gerra, Reggio Emilia (IT), 2007 Kunstraum Innsbruck (AT), 2005 Museum der Moderne Salzburg (AT).
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Margarida Paiva was born in Coimbra, Portugal in 1975. In 2001 she moved to Norway and lives currently in Oslo. In 2007, she completed her Master degree at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts, and has earlier studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Porto and Art Academy in Trondheim. Among her solo shows: Untitled Stories, Lab.65 Contemporary Art Gallery, Porto, Portugal; Every Story Is Imperfect, Oslo Intercultural Museum, Norway; Erase, Muratcentoventidue Contemporary Art Gallery, Bari. Among her group shows and video festivals: Migrating Stories, Screen City Biennial, Stavanger, Norway; Stereo. Not Mono, F15 Contemporary Art Gallery, Moss, Norway; Stories and Desires From Who Sleeps, Camara Oscura Contemporary Art Gallery, Madrid, Spain; Debaixo da Película, Image Museum, Braga, Portugal; KINO DER KUNST, International Art Film Festival, Munich, Germany; The 30th Documentary Film and Video Festival, Kassel, Germany; Videoformes, XXIIe Intern. Video Art and Media Festival, Clermont-Ferrand, France; COURTisane, Short Film, Video and New Media Festival, Ghent; Belgium; European Media Art Festival, Osnabrück, Germany; Under Surveillance, Oeiras Image Festival, Lisbon, Portugal.
Her short film Every Story Is Imperfect (2012) has been awarded at FOKUS 2014, Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen, Denmark.
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Charlotte Thiis-Evensen (1968) lives and works in Oslo, Norway. She has an MA of Literary Science from the University of Oslo and have studied art at the National Academy of the Arts in Oslo. As an artist she is working with documentarism in video, photo and installations. Several of her artworks are about how unspoken power structures seriously limit the individual’s freedom of action. Beside production of art she has been working as a journalist at the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation for fifteen years both with documentary film and with journalistic programs. For the last five years Charlotte Thiis-Evensen has had her own Television Program in the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation called The Architects Home. She is both director and presenter in this program. Thiis-Evensen has exhibited in national and international venues and artfilmfestivals including: The Artist's House, Oslo in Norway, Bergen Art Museum (KODE) in Bergen, Norway. Riga Photography Biennial in Latvia, OSL Contemporary, Oslo. DOK Leipzig, in Germany, Documentary Festival in Goyang City South Korea, The National Museum of Art, Oslo in Norway and DokumentART, Neubrandenburd in Germany.
http://www.charlotte-thiis-evensen.com/
BLINDNESS
The blindness to which the title of the exhibition refers is obviously metaphorical, it is a state of the human being, it is the inability to see the others and what surrounds us, it is indifference and a lack of empathy.
The literary tradition, since the Archaic Greece, has often played on the metaphor of physical blindness, from Tiresias, to Oedipus, king of Thebes, up to recent years, humanity made blind by a sudden pandemic in the novel by José Saramago, Essay on Blindness, the history of literature is full of significant examples of symbolic blindness.
In recent decades, technological development and globalization have guaranteed the possibility of making information travel easily and throughout the planet. Contact, albeit virtual, has become easy and immediate. Everyone can know what is happening on the other side of the world, get informed and create connecting networks. Yet man passively lets himself be informed, like a blind man who, unable to see, lets himself be told. He does not open his eyes, but remains indifferent to the changes, and to the risks that threaten humanity starting with global warming.
The title of the exhibition, which aims to make us reflect on man's behavior towards an epochal drama such as climate change, is inspired by the essay by Zygmunt Bauman "Moral blindness - The loss of sensitivity in liquid modernity" which tells about the collective loss of sensitivity and moral imagination in a society that lives for consumerism, but also to the essay by the Indian writer Amitav Ghosh, The great blindness, (it is the Italian edition title) which examines our inability to grasp climate change and to find the solutions.
He has no hope in the future, the current model of extremely material life, individual and crushed on a single existence profoundly affects any question about our destiny and the future of the world. And culture, so intimately linked to the history of capitalism, able of recounting wars and numerous crises, reveals a singular, irreducible resistance to face climate change.
The gallery is therefore particularly pleased to present four artists of various nationalities, Georgie Friedman, Sissa Micheli, Margarida Paiva, and Charlotte Thiis-Evensen who, with their works, intend us to reflect on the theme of global warming.
all images, video and other content © georgie friedman unless otherwise noted