24 June 2011: She Devil 5, Rome > Kate Street

In a young Curator's career (or "career"), there are certain occasions for celebrations. You know, little small satisfactions, like when you select a talented video artist whose work is then included in a group show, and the screening happens to happen - hear ye! - in your hometown's Public Museum: the MACRO - Museum of Contemporary Art Rome.
Your name, together with those of other 12 remarkable colleagues, shines in small white letters on a black panel, and your little critical text is printed on paper handouts, and passed from hands to bags.

I saw Kate Street's work for the first time at Nettie Horn and always wanted to realise a project with her. Some fortunate circumstances made this possible in grand style, and for it I am grateful to the artist and to Italian gallerist Stefania Miscetti. But let's skip the chatting and go straight to the copy-and-paste of what the event was all about, plus some pics of the evening.

This is the Press Release:

SHE DEVIL was devised in 2006 by Stefania Miscetti for Italian and international female artists and curators, from the youngest to the most successful. Different works and critical perspectives coexist in a multivocal discourse which reveals the many facets of the female world and vision. This broad spectrum of activities and aims can be seen in the exhibitions that have been organised over the past years, which have included 40 video works and involved 24 curators, as well as a special international edition held in Bucharest in 2009.

As part of its summer 2011 exhibition cycle, MACRO is hosting a new edition of the project, now in its fifth year, an event that is perfectly in line with the galaxy of cultural and artistic proposals that have defined the identity of the Museum over the past few years. On the opening night the videos in this new edition will be presented in the conference room of the Museum's new wing, the nerve centre of the New MACRO exhibition area. The wing, too, was designed by a woman, the architect Odile Decq, thus it is the perfect setting for the presentation of the video works.

The Fifth Edition is curated by: Antonia Alampi, sybin - susanna bianchini, Benedetta Carpi de Resmini, Dobrila Denegri, Maria Garzia, Laura Giorgini, Maria Cristina Giusti, Caterina Iaquinta, Manuela Pacella, Cristiana Perrella, Lydia Pribisova, Elena Giulia Rossi, Chiara Vigliotti.

Thirteen videos by International female artists were presented, among which Kate Street's Flowering, 2010 (duration 1'29''). It was the only video animation on display.

In Kate's work, nature is always scary or uncanny. In Flowering’s case, the artist used childhood memories, in particular the belief according to which, if you swallow a plant’s seed, this grows up in our stomach. We see the plant filling the frame and engulfing the figure; its expansion creates an intermittent, not linear time suggested by the images that converge one inside the other in an uncertain, non-fluid way. The animated sequence makes one think of a complex association of thoughts, which is a characteristic of femalès nature; sometimes, our same guesswork overpowers us and it is hard to swallow it back inside, to dominate it. At the same time the ending, though not encouraging, suggests an exorcism of these fears, which is favoured just by going through such violent experience. As it happens also in her precedent works, Kate Street’s guideline is the different and possible meanings that some images’ associations generate in the viewer.

Kate Street, Flowering, 2010, video still. Courtesy: The Artist

She Devil 5 is on until 8 January 2012 at MACRO, precisely in the V-Tunnel.

I went back home for the opening, and the Museum was packed with people visiting also the other shows that are currently still on. It was nice to see familiar and unfamiliar faces around.

Show me the Shoes you wear and I will tell you what kind of Curator you are: Curator's Stuff