On the occasion of Art City Bologna 2026, the Fondazione Carlo Gajani hosts “A body engineered by water”, a solo exhibition by Claudia Amatruda focused on the themes of body, water and feminism. The exhibition will be viewable throughout Art City week, until Sunday February 8 (with the exception of Wednesday February 4, closing day). Saturday 7, on the occasion of White Night, there will be a special talk led by Fuorisedia with the Parsec collective, with introduction by art historian Giuseppe Virelli and readings by writer Anna Papa. To learn more we decided to meet with curators Sara Papini and Fuorisedia.
Claudia Amatruda, “Operation Theatre (OT) n.1_Hypersea”, 2024, photo Sara Papini, courtesy Fondazione Gajani
Francesco Liggieri: How did the exhibition project come about and why did you choose to put it in dialogue with the spaces of Fondazione Carlo Gajani, strongly characterized as home, studio and place of memory?
Sara Papini and Fuorisedia: The exhibition project was born from a series of encounters, the first between Sara Papini and artist Claudia Amatruda, during the shared residency at Parsec in 2024, the second with the Fuorisedia collective, right in the spaces of Fondazione Gajani on the occasion of the Art City 2025 exhibition, “Blinding Plan: The Minimalism of Art”, also curated by Papini. For the 2026 edition we decided to propose Amatruda’s work in dialogue with the home-studio of Bolognese photographer Carlo Gajani, interested in the possible comparison between practices linked to the body and the photographic medium.
In what way has the historical and symbolic presence of Carlo Gajani influenced the curatorial choices and the narrative structure of the exhibition?
Gajani’s legacy within the space constitutes an important presence to confront; finding a dialogical balance between the two proved to be a challenge: we decided to play through a visiting path in which the photographer’s presence, initially preponderant, gradually gives way to Amatruda’s body.
The body is central both in Gajani’s practice and in Claudia Amatruda’s: what continuities and what fractures emerge between these two researches?
The dialogue between the two practices is composed of a high degree of conflictuality, dependent especially on the positioning of the two authors. Among Gajani’s most known works are, in fact, portraits of female bodies investigated from a formal point of view; on the contrary, Amatruda reappropriates the photographic medium and the representation of the female body, to escape a male and normative gaze. The comparison between the two works also speaks to us of the historical and socio-cultural difference in which they are situated. The installation in semi-darkness radically transforms the fruition of the space.
Claudia Amatruda, “Pinna nuova”, 2026, photo Letizia Albertini, courtesy Fondazione Gajani
What role does darkness have as curatorial and perceptual device?
Semi-darkness is a perceptual device useful to modulate, not only the dialogue between the authors, but also the relationship between works and publics: the black backdrop, recurring in the photographer’s female portraits, as well as evocative of the darkroom, becomes the environment in which Amatruda’s three-dimensional self-portraits are situated; the people who traverse the space are led to direct attention to the author’s body and, at the same time, to their own. Amatruda’s works stage a technological, hybrid and non-normative body.
How important, for you, is the political value of this representation?
The transfeminist and intersectional positioning of the curatorial collective has determined the will to give space to a representation that is not the dominant one. The non-normed body has a political value and dedicating attention to it within the cultural discourse, therefore public, is in itself a political act. Support instruments become vital extensions of the body.
Claudia Amatruda, “Autoritatto Cyborg”, 2026, photo Sara Papini, courtesy Fondazione Gajani
Can we read this exhibition as a proposal of imaginary for a future corporeality?
The post-human gaze of our research has married very well with Amatruda’s work, where support instruments are not only extensions that are vital for her but devices that present themselves with pride in her shots, demonstrating that extension is not subtraction, but the principle for the imagination of possible futures.
Amatruda’s works stage a technological, hybrid and non-normative body. How important, for you, is the political value of this representation?
With “Autoritratto Cyborg n.1” Amatruda discovers a way to narrate herself that transcends her photographic image and expands to material device: a basin full of water supported by a metallic structure, subject of a continuous oscillation, produces the tension you speak of; water, thus, becomes metaphor of adaptation and dependence on the devices that regulate its movement. Cyborg devices can, therefore, generate beauty.
Parete espositiva prima stanza della Fondazione Carlo Gajani, photo Claudia Amatruda, courtesy Fondazione Gajani
In works like “Pinna Nuova” visibility depends on light. What relationship exists between invisibility, transformation and identity of the body?
Light, as well as darkness are omnipresent not only in Pinna but in the entire installation path, darkness helps us enter a different installation path, aimed precisely at making us rediscover our body in an environment where all senses are modified. Body that is there, floating body, invisible body but also other body.
How important, in this project, is overturning the hierarchies between who looks and who is looked at?
Proposing a medicalized body from an artistic point of view is in itself an inversion of narrative; moreover it is fundamental to consider that the resignification of the cyborg body is proposed by the artist herself, who positions herself no longer as object of vision but as dialoguing subject.
Info:
Claudia Amatruda. A body engineered by water
03.02 2026 – 08.02 2026
Fondazione Carlo Gajani
Via De’ Castagnoli 14, Bologna
www.fondazionecarlogajani.it
Independent artist and curator. Founder of No Title Gallery in 2011. I observe, study, ask questions, take informations and live in contemporary art, a real stimulus for my research.
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