Christian Balzano. I ARE BORDER

Diary, the program of activations accompanying Minor Frequencies: The Inner Life Of A Nation — the exhibition of the National Pavilion of the United Republic of Tanzania at the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia — continues.
From 6 to 27 September, the spaces of the Gervasuti Foundation will host I ARE BORDER, a solo exhibition by Christian Balzano, curated by Martina Cavallarin with Antonio Caruso, with curatorial contribution by Camilla Ballesto.

Already present in the Pavilion with the installation La stanza del Matto (The Fool's Room), Balzano now develops that core research into an autonomous project that explores the theme of the border not as a geographical or political limit, but as an existential condition. Installations, sculptures and paintings make up a journey in which identity, belonging and memory are continually redefined through encounters with the other, suggesting a geography made of relationships rather than separations.

"Christian Balzano's artistic research stems from an inner urgency to understand the dynamics of contemporary society, crossing cultural, political and religious borders," comments curator Martina Cavallarin. "He uses signs, symbols and heterogeneous materials to build an open, questioning, never definitive visual language. He does not seek answers, but spaces for reflection."
At the center of the exhibition returns the figure of the Fool (il Matto), the artist's alter ego and protagonist of a journey through physical and interior territories. Close to the trickster archetype, the Fool moves through systems of power without belonging to them, cracks consolidated certainties, and suggests the possibility of imagining new balances between individuals, communities and cultures.

The title itself, I ARE BORDER (Io Siamo Confine), deliberately introduces a linguistic fracture. The grammatical error — "I are border" — becomes a poetic statement: identity never coincides with an isolated subject, but takes shape in the plurality of relationships that run through it. The border thus ceases to be a dividing line and becomes instead a dynamic space of negotiation, contamination and mutual recognition.

The exhibition path alternates paintings, sculptures and environmental installations. In the paintings the bull reappears — a recurring figure in Balzano's poetics — taken up as a metaphor for the forces that cross every frontier; the maps trace mobile geographies, where territories and belongings overlap and transform; and a series of suspended aluminum gongs invites the public to intervene directly in the work, making listening, gesture and participation constitutive elements of the exhibition experience.

The opening on Saturday, 5 September at 6:30 pm will be preceded by a guided tour with the curators and the artist inside Minor Frequencies: The Inner Life Of A Nation, followed by the opening of the exhibition.... read the rest of the article»