Qualcosa è cambiato. Nuovi progetti, vecchie prospettive.

Salve, sono sybin, forse vi ricorderete di me per post come The Kite Flyer, oppure SybinQ Art Projects is Born. Tutta roba che scrivevo mentre ero a Londra, dove ho passato gli ultimi cinque anni.
L'ultimo post che ho scritto risale a Dicembre 2011 e, mentre spazzolo via la polvere virtuale ed elimino le ragnatele dalla rete, faccio il punto della situazione: un anno dopo avrei avuto una figlia (non, ceci n'est pas un mommy blog. Jamais! Jamais!) e ancora sei mesi dopo io e la mia famigliola ci saremmo ri-trasferiti in Italia.

A Bergamo, per la precisione, e non a Roma che è la mia città natale.

Roba che quando racconto questo ad un interlocutore c'è ancora chi mi chiede se sono sana di mente: "Usti! Da Londra a Bergamo? Bel cambiamento, neh?" Eh. Confesso che tale prospettiva non entusiasmava neanche me, che mi occupo di arte contemporanea ed ero scappata a Londra proprio per avere "qualche chance in più." Tuttavia, poi siamo arrivati qui e lo scetticismo iniziale si è trasformato in "umh", un suono onomatopeico a metà tra la riflessione e l'apprezzamento.

Per esempio, ho cambiato punto di vista. Per dire, a Londra, quando aprivo la mia famosa bay window, avevo questo paesaggio:

Paesaggio urbano e poco attraente, si, ma vivevamo a un tiro di schioppo da Oxford Street, quindi, ci stava. Il quartiere di Fitzrovia era la nostra oasi tranquilla nel mezzo del caotico centro di Londra. Però, per dire, adesso apro la finestra della casa a Bergamo, che nel mio giudizio iniziale era La Qualunque cittadina mai frequentata del Nord Italia, ed il paesaggio è il seguente:

Photo Credits: Eco di Bergamo

Quello che ti frega, a Bergamo, per quanto puoi essere prevenuta, sono le colline. La città alta è un gioiellino incastonato dalle mura e tutt'intorno la morbidezza di queste colline, puntinate da chiesette e abitazioni, sembra quasi un comitato di accoglienza.

Ho cambiato prospettiva. Quando arriva una figlia a cambiarti la vita si cerca un luogo che sia a misura di bambino e di famiglia. Ho iniziato perfino a parlare di maternità, in pillole.  Questo però non vuol dire che io sia stata con le mani in mano fino a questo momento: del resto, organizzare mostre e fare il curatore è una specie di mania.

Ecco un progettino a cui ho lavorato l'anno scorso: www.lightingmoodscontest.com
Un parco pubblico. Delle lampade ad energia solare. La sinergia tra arte e nutrimento culturale. Un concorso per artisti emergenti che ha visto vincere la giovane Isabella Mara, che ha avuto l'occasione di lavorare accanto ad altre due artiste storiche come Mariella Bettineschi ed Alice Anderson. L'idea era di trasformare un parco pubblico di periferia in un luogo espositivo, mettendo l'arte alla portata di tutti e ponendo l'accento sull'importanza delle energie rinnovabili.

Un altro bel progetto a cui sto lavorando attualmente è stato annunciato oggi su un altro blog, precisamente Ma Che Davvero di Chiara Cecilia Santamaria, che seguo praticamente dagli esordi. Che emozione! Ecco perché sono qui ad aggiornare in fretta e furia il mio bistrattato blog, nell'attesa che venga trasformato in un funzionalissimo sito web.

E continui a portare avanti gli intenti di SybinQ Art Projects di promuovere l'arte contemporanea attraverso la circolazione delle cultura, la commissione di nuove opere per spazi inconsueti e la creazione di networks internazionali.

Stavolta, per il Book Art Project lo spazio inconsueto è quello di un libro, trasformato in opera d'arte in un progetto unico nel suo genere. Per l'occasione, SybinQ Art Projects ritorna a Roma, al Pastificio Cerere, luogo storico di San Lorenzo, sede di studi di artisti che hanno fatto la storia della pittura Italiana, come ad esempio Giuseppe Gallo, per cui ho avuto il piacere di lavorare prima che la mia avventura Londinese avesse inizio.

La mostra sarà allo Spazio Cerere dal 26 al 30 Novembre 2015, e per me è un po' come tornare a casa, in tutti i sensi. Vi aspetto!

© Chiara Cecilia Santamaria, Ma Che Davvero

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 

Labels

Conversation in Rome:

A: "Look at you! You definitely are well!"
sy: "Ah, thanks. By the way, I brought something from London: scones! We can have them with mascarpone and marmalade because I had to leave the clotted cream behind..."
A: "Oh, you're so English."

Conversation in London:

B: "Are you having another beer?"
sy: "No thanks, I am fine."
B: "Oh, you're so European."

First of all, HAPPY NEW YEAR! 

To be totally honest with you, I would rather have nailed myself to the old one and let it linger, just a little bit more. I really enjoyed the past year, for which I didn't have great expectations and instead it turned out to be very productive, therefore I am welcoming the new one with a bit of wariness.
But it's just a sensation and will dissipate very quickly, as the division of time in years is just a notion: to comfort myself, I have started to think about time as a continued, uninterrupted flow.
It's up to us to make this new year work, not the stars or the planets' conjunction.

The year 2010 ended accompanied by many sensations.
The ones discussed in the reported conversations, for example. The labels that make you feel an in-betweener. You go home and everyone sees you as very English (??), whereas when you come back to your new home, where you started to feel even more comfortable (!!), here it comes this sort of disillusion. The result is a question: where do you belong now, exactly?
Deep down, you know of course. Then why do you feel so strange, even physically, in your hometown?

About last post and all my purposes, I did respect many: I went around a lot, saw friends and family, wore short sleeved garments which left everyone astonished.

C: "Oh my God, aren't you cold?"
sy: "My dear, it's minus one in London! Here it's 18 degrees!"
C: "You've become so..."
sy: "English, I know. In fact, it's called acclimatization."

The first days were accompanied by too much food and a persistent feeling of dizziness, nausea almost. I blamed it on the fact that the air must be much less polluted in Rome, but as you may imagine such symptoms bring up other kind of speculations, like pregnancy. Smile politely and let your interlocutor know that no, you're taking it easy. Same sentence as last year, of course.

After all of this is gone, you lapse yourself into family and friends cuddles, the true thing that makes you feel home once again. Some of them still ask you what is it that you miss the most. Well, after five minutes thinking, the answer is: definitely this, but unfortunately it's not unbearable anymore.
Not quite, at least.

I will leave you now with some pictures of places. Not the charming alleys of Rome that I so much wanted to visit again (and I did, avoiding the already mentioned traffic jam this time!), but other kind of places with their dense atmosphere.
Places where people come and go, sit comfortably for a while, share life, experiences, leave and come back the day after, or the year after.

Caffe' Necci, Rome

Caffe' Terzi, Bologna

Trattoria Anna Maria, Bologna: all frames contain greetings by very happy clients. No surprise: amazing tortellini.

Trastevere, Rome: please notice the blackboard next to the entrance.

Book store in Trastevere, Rome: I see Jamie Oliver has reached us

Very old Restaurant in Piazza Campo de' Fiori, Rome

I have stolen this last two pictures on a very crowded underground in Rome.
I had to act quickly, and pretend I was just browsing the images on my camera.

Something MAXXI is happening in Rome

Rome.

That's where I come from. I have been living in London for a long time now, and I really love it. I always think I do not miss Rome until I spend some days there, then things become embarrassing.

Like, for example, taking the car and throwing myself in the much dreaded road that goes alongside the river Tiber, the one I know it's always two hours traffic jam. Why? Just to say hello to some places. Just to see the beauty of my city once again, the magic of the Lungotevere, although I know it like the palm of my hand.

The little gothic church that is completely unmatched with its surroundings is still there. 

So is that bump on the road. 

Oh, look, there are more maintenance works for the third underground line, will they ever manage to finish it? 
Ah, here it comes Castel Sant'Angelo...

Oh, this is the place where I was with my friends on that evening when...

And so on.

Well I am not completely crazy, my journey of that day was aimed to a destination: the new museum for architecture and contemporary art that has just opened in Rome last May. It's called Museum of the Arts of the XXI century. In a word: MAXXI. How clever is this? We romans waited something like 10 years to see this museum finally completed. 

Ten. Years. 

I will save you the details on politics that would explain you why-on-earth did it take so long.

I went there with two friends: an artist and an architect. 

From outside, the concrete structure devised by Zaha Hadid seems to challenge the laws of standing buildings: from top to bottom, some parts entwine one in the other like a living geometric snake, with a section at the top culminating in a gigantic window facing the city. Inside, industrial stairs climb to the top in a net of patterns to follow, making the visitor unable to really orientate and therefore enhancing his or her curiosity. 

Not an easy space to put up shows (but which one is, nowadays?). After having enjoyed the beautiful solo show of Gino De Dominicis, in good company with Kutlung Ataman and the works from the Museum's Collection, I have asked my friends what they thought about it. The architect said that in his opinion the building, which should just contain art, was taking over a bit. The artist didn't really reply: she was completely mesmerized by De Dominicis' work, as we can see below.

I was really disappointed to hear that many of my fellow citizens criticised the fact that the project was given to a foreign architect rather than to an Italian: there was a context, and the best project won, that's all. Sometimes we seem to have this patriotic sparks only in the most inappropriate contexts.

I am proud that this Museum finally saw the light, and really liked the complex, not-white-cube-like space where art has to stand out in order not to be sucked in. When you reach the last level, where the big glass window is, you literally have to climb up the floor, which is slightly steep. All around the main hall, an installation by Maurizio Mochetti tries to draw in the the air with red tubes, interacting with the rest. On the middle level, a video by Studio Azzurro slowly scrolls about.

People were there. Not just arty people: families, tourists, youngsters, oldies, you name it. They sold 3500 tickets just on the first day and there was a queue as long as one for Madonna's concert.

Being Rome the capital of classic and ancient art, it has always been difficult for contemporary art to really find some public space. We have the MACRO Museum, and now there is also the MAXXI, but the attention was never great. Could we say that this might be a good start for the big leap forward everyone is waiting for?


Before leaving for some holidays*, in which I will go to the beach everyday and be exactly like the picture here on the right, a special mention to this picture, on the MAXXI's website. That really gives the idea of great team work.

Well done!



*this post was meant to be published on 07/07. I have now finished my holidays and came back to London, where the second appointment with The Bay Window Project is on.