“Chiamare a raduno. Sorelle. Falene e fiammelle. Ossa di leonesse, pietre e serpentesse” (Call for a rally. Sisters. Moths and flames. Bones of lionesses, stones and snakes), is the title of Chiara Camoni’s solo show, in the exhibition spaces of Pirelli HangarBicocca, in Milan. The exhibition, curated by Lucia Aspesi and Fiammetta Griccioli, is open to the public until 21 July 2024 and brings together the most heterogeneous corpus of works by the artist – ever presented in Italy – with a series of new productions. Camoni, born in 1974, lives and works in Seravazza (LU), a Tuscan town known for its environmental variety: from the rocky walls of the Apuan Alps to the clear streams and dense woods. And it is no coincidence, in fact, to see how her works are composed of organic elements in continuous dialogue with nature and parts of it: from cooked earth to minerals, up to the use of sedimentary stones.

Chiara Camoni “Chiamare a raduno. Sorelle. Falene e fiammelle. Ossa di leonesse, pietre e serpentesse”. View of the exhibition, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2024. Courtesy the artist and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan Photo Agostino Osio

The title of the exhibition is conceived as if it were a spell to offer a sacred perception of the space and the various figures that inhabit it. The observer can feel part of a mysterious code, which is subject to the laws of the cosmos and of that millenary feminine power, already passing through the two Lionesses in Lecce stone, placed at the entrance to the exhibition: two hieratic figures whose material is composed of marine sediments, shells and animal bones. They have a look outside of time, which marks the beginning of the journey, and one immediately perceives the symmetry of a mystical spatial geometry, with a strong evocation of an almost shamanic nature. The artist herself declares that «the exhibition presents itself as a landscape, sensitive to the natural light that comes from outside and to the darkness of the evening; and the works are in relation not only with the public, but also with each other: they look in many directions and look at each other. It is an exhibition full of eyes, figures, presences, animals and insects».

Chiara Camoni “Chiamare a raduno. Sorelle. Falene e fiammelle. Ossa di leonesse, pietre e serpentesse”. View of the exhibition, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2024. Courtesy the artist and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan Photo Agostino Osio

The idea of a choral orchestration of the various elements is clear: an architecture of community and concentration, inspired in its forms by the late Renaissance Italian garden and archaeological sites. In fact, the works are arranged on the sides, in a circular manner, transforming the exhibition into a gathering where there is no difference between object, sculpture and architecture. The sense of union and the totality of the elements bind, create harmony, open spaces and directions with a labile and ambiguous boundary. The artist is not interested in conceptually evoking the idea of a border, but in proposing a cyclical organicity starting from the choice of natural light, which alternates with the evening darkness. Furthermore, the central part of the exhibition space is empty because it is functional to channeling the relationship between the works and between them and the observer. It is the symbolic nodal point of concentration, in which the call of a spirituality announced in the title converges, where the public can feel lost.

Chiara Camoni, “The Three Serpents”, 2024 (detail). Installation view, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2024. Produced by Pirelli HangarBicocca. Courtesy the artist; SpazioA, Pistoia, and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan. Photo Agostino Osio

The Sisters series responds to the intention of creating a strong visual suggestion, with respect to which, referring to their own dreamlike and unconscious dimension, Camoni argued «they are female figures that include the masculine, the animal, the vegetal and the mineral. They are ambiguous: they welcome opposites and contradictions. Many of them have two faces. Two personalities. Each one has her own attitude and asks us for a relationship. They are figures in change and ask us for a relationship». They are made up of around a hundred necklaces in polychrome terracotta and the accumulation of different materials such as wax, stoneware and porcelain, vegetal elements, but also iron, plastic and found objects: all small pieces modeled by hand, the result of a group work which the artist competes every time in the formation and composition of her sculptures, in a collective action that becomes a metaphorical dance.

Chiara Camoni, “Sister”, 2022. Installation view, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2024. Produced by Biennale Gherdëina. Courtesy the artist; SpazioA, Pistoia, and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan. Photo Agostino Osio

Digital prints remain within the organic sphere: they are created on silk through direct contact with flowers, leaves and herbs, without addition of colour, because the natural elements themselves create their imprints. Then, on the floor, there is the series of onyx flakes that divides the exhibition space and turns out to be the shape of different “female snakes”. The exhibition offers the gaze a scenario with a choral breath, with cosmic references, in which archaic female power is recalled by the universal and forgotten symbolism of the snake, a sign of fruitful energy in many archaic matriarchal traditions. The works are capable of evoking a primordial emanation, which refers to the organic cyclicality of matter and a shamanic evocation, in the subtle balance between the visible world and the invisible world.

Nilla Zaira D’Urso

Info:

Chiara Camoni. Chiamare a raduno. Sorelle. Falene e fiammelle. Ossa di leonesse, pietre e serpentesse.
15/02/2024 – 21/07/2024
curated by Lucia Aspesi and Fiammetta Griccioli
Pirelli HangarBicocca
Via Chiese 2 – 20126 Milano
ww.pirellihangarbicocca.org

Nilla Zaira D'Urso

Through art she feels the need to get closer to nature, deciding to create an artistic residence on Etna as a “refuge for contemporary art” for artists and scholars. Thus was born Nake artistic residence. She won the Responsible Etna Award 2015. In 2017, she was invited to the Sala Zuccari, Senate of the Republic, as an art critic. She writes for Italian and foreign artists. Curator of the first Museum of Contemporary Art of Etna and of the “Contemporary Etna” project.