
Muratcentoventidue Artecontemporanea is pleased to present "Deserti" a group exhibition featuring six artists of various nationalities who have chosen to set their works in the deserts of our planet. The desert is not only a natural element, it is, at the same time, a different place that has always exerted a great fascination.
The metaphysical depth of a space outside of time, irreducible to the measure of man, minimal and silent crossed only by the unstoppable flow of the wind has inspired extraordinary works of art and architecture.
Surreal and often shrouded in a certain mysticism, these inhospitable but magnetic landscapes have long provided artists with the space and the place for their works. The artists on display Shirin Abedinirad, Elisabetta Di Sopra, Julia Charlotte Richter, Raeda Saadeh, Sira-Zoé Schmid use different languages such as photography and video.
Shirin Abedinirad is an Iranian visual artist and writer based in Utah, US. She explores notions of identity, unity with nature, and the boundless essence of being through various mediums including video, performance, land art, and installation.
Born in Tabriz, Iran in 1986, Shirin began her artistic journey with painting before going on to earn degrees in graphic design and fashion. While researching conceptual overlaps between fashion and conceptual art, she became fascinated by performance and started staging public interventions confronting issues of gender, sexuality, and human compassion back in Iran. Shirin's practice took a pivotal turn after a 2013 desert experience led her to create land and installation works centering natural imagery, using minimalist arrangements of elemental materials like water, mirrors, and light. Currently splitting her time between the United States and overseas projects, Shirin continues her conceptual exploration into the essence of selfhood and its relationship with nature through varied types of new media art.... read the rest of the article»
The artist presents "Gliss" in which she addresses one of the biggest problems of living in the desert: the lack of water. At first glance, the circular mirror, partially covered in gold sand, seems like a small pond. Only later do we realize that, in fact, it is the sky, reflected on the dunes. By altering our perception of nature and offering us a distorted vision, the artist challenges the human mind and the natural elements.
Known nationally and internationally, Elisabetta Di Sopra lives and works in Venice. A graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice, her artistic research unfolds through video works, installations and graphics, addressing themes related to the emotional sphere, family relationships and practices of care with particular attention to the dimension of pain and fragility that characterize our existential condition. Focusing on the use of video to address issues related to the female condition and the role of women in contemporary society, she uses a narrative characterized by simple and incisive actions that highlight the psychological dynamics underlying daily life, family relationships, the female body and social roles. The body, which speaks through minimal gestures, is the basis of her work, becoming a metaphor for our being in the world. She has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions both in Italy and abroad.
In Senza tracce (2023) - the latest video produced and shot during a trip to the Wadi Rum desert - the artist, after walking on the dunes, felt the need to erase the footprints left in that place: a choice in stark contrast with the spasmodic overexposure that characterizes our time, where what matters is leaving a mark on this world.
Julia Charlotte Richter (* 1982 in Gießen ) is a German video artist. Her films are always about people. In her videos, she explores the meaning of present in different stages of age and awareness, and depicts how consciousness, behavior, wishes and desires blend together. On the basis of sensitively arranged scenes, metaphorical places of transition are created. It shows how young people reject adulthood because they perceive the adult world as a threat. Conversely, memories penetrate the saturated or hyperactive everyday life of adults: the memory of what one once was, of what one believed or believes one is on the ladder of success.
"Point Blank" refers to a film scene from "The Misfits" (1961) that is now re-enacted and further contextualized. In the original scene, the recently divorced main character Roslyn (Marilyn Monroe) rises up against three worn-out cowboys and, in the middle of the desert, confronts the men with all their lacks and lost dreams. In "Point Blank", we see a young woman wandering around in surreal desert landscapes, a journey into the remoteness of the world and her own inner life. With every step out into the desert, the girl descends into her own depths searching for a place that seems to be suitable for her emotions and words. Unlike Roslyn, the young woman now refers to absent addressees: "Liars", "Murderers" and "Dead Men" she screams and turns around wildly. The words, which spread like bullets in the air, fall back on her. Except for a faint echo, there is no resonance at this place that depicts the obsessions of a distorted, patriarchal society and has become a dramatic backdrop of yearnings within the collective history of cinema. Where Roslyn was able to elicit a terrified astonishment from the three men, the character in Julia Charlotte Richter's video remains to herself and unheard, the desert as the only witness of her manifesto, her anger and her strength.
Eleonora Roaro (Varese, 1989) is a visual artist and researcher based in Milano. She holds degrees in Photography (BA – IED, Milano), Visual Arts and Curatorial Studies (MA – NABA, Milano), and Contemporary Art Practice (MA – Plymouth University, Plymouth). Her practice is based on the moving image, with a particular focus on cinema history, archaeology of cinema, and archives. Engaging with a diverse range of media, including video, photography, performance, AI and virtual reality, she frequently revisits, reenacts, and remediates older devices and iconographies to understand the influence that technologies and images have on our perception and cultural imagery.
As such, display and duration – particular the concept of the loop – are key elements of her practice. Her current research, based on archives and oral sources, investigates the relationship between architecture, spectatorship and urbanism in 20th-century cinema theatres. Robert Smithson's earthwork "Spiral Jetty" (1970) is located at the Rozel Point peninsula on the northeastern shore of the Great Salt Lake, Utah. This place, characterized by its rose colours, contains deposits of oil that had been subjected to unsuccessful drilling attempts for decades. The art installation had been underwater for thirty years; nonetheless, as stated by Geoff Dyer in the book "White Sands", visitors kept going on the site. In 2002 a drought revealed the work again, and from that moment it has been mostly visible. In the video-performance "Vanishing Point" the camera is positioned next to the last stone of the Spiral Jetty.
From that point, the artist walks towards the lake until she disappears in the water, as had happened to Smithson's work for a long time. The distance covered is an anthropometric form of measuring of the ongoing process of desertification, climate change and entropy. The title refers to the chapter in Jean Baudrillard's "America" (1986) dedicated to the American deserts among which he also describes Salt Lake City and the Great Salt Lake. "The unfolding of the desert is infinitely close to the timelessness of film", he states when he describes the unreal and abstract atmosphere of these solitary and empty landscapes.
Raeda Saadeh (*1977, Palestine) was born in Umm al-Fahm in 1977 and studied at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem, where she lives today. She is an internationally renowned photographer, her works are exhibited all over the world.Her means of expression are, in addition to photography, installation, video and performances Saadeh's work uses the body as a tool to explore identity, gender and space as well as the relationship between place and the self.
Her performances, videos and photo works are preoccupied with borders as a cultural, topographical and physical phenomenon. In her work, the artist often takes on different personae, which can be interpreted as radical feminist statements and as conceptual comments about social and religious issues. In her enactment of mythical figures and fairy tale characters Raeda Saadeh decontextualises Israel's idealised landscapes, exploring the actual situation of the occupied areas and the crossing of social and (especially) gender-specific, standardised borders.
The two-channel video performance Vacuum shows the artist vacuuming the barren hills of Palestine. This absurd but simple act not only casts a critical shadow on gender roles, but also relocates the act of vacuuming and cleaning, which is traditionally ascribed to women, from the private sphere into a politically charged space. The act of vacuuming desert is an impossible and impractical task, symbolizing the daily efforts of Palestinians facing challenges, with real change seeming out of reach. This is reminiscent of the myth of Sisyphus, who pushes a rock to the top of a hill only for it to roll back down. The piece portrays the determination to carry out tasks despite their absurdity, embodying the spirit of resilience and perseverance that Palestinians hold onto despite ongoing difficulties.
Sira-Zoé Schmid is an Austrian artist who has developed her research mainly through photography, text, installation and performance. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna in the class "Fine Arts and Photography" with Matthias Herrmann and Martin Guttmann, graduating in 2013. She lives and works in Vienna and Salzburg. She has received numerous scholarships, participated in residency projects and her work has been exhibited in various international institutions and galleries. Developing her research in the field of photography in a broad sense, Sira-Zoé Schmid begins a journey that explores its multiple potentialities. The analysis of all media and sociocultural issues that surround us are reflected in her work. Deserts have been the inhospitable and constantly evolving environments of her video performances.
In 2017 Schmid began her series of video performances "Desert Flower" in the American Mojave Desert. A woman, the artist, wearing a dark dress and a small blue parasol and turning her back to the viewer, walks along a lonely path in the desert until she disappears into the horizon.
During the artist residency in Lanzarote and Gran Canaria in 2022, Schmid continued her performance series Desert Flower with a second part. In „Desert Flower I" , the video she presents in this exhibition, with a clear and poetic visual language she shows us a woman in a surreal landscape of austere beauty, an ideal space in which to take an introspective journey into one's inner world.
Title: Deserti
Opening: January 18, 2025
Ending: February 28, 2025
Place: Bari, Muratcentoventidue Artecontemporanea
Address: Via G. Murat 122/b - Bari
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