Data / Ora
Date(s) - 11/03/2023 - 13/05/2023
11:00 am - 7:00 pm
Luogo
Galerie Alberta Pane
Categorie
The Alberta Pane Gallery is pleased to present in its new Parisian space the fourth solo show of Romina De Novellis.
Romina De Novellis is a performer, visual artist, and researcher, born in Naples, raised in Rome, and living in Paris since 2008. Trained as a dancer, she studies the body from an anthropological perspective through the prism of Mediterranean cultures. The artist uses ecofeminist theories as a parameter to analyze and denounce the oppressive realities of our societies and the dichotomies of nature-humanity, femininity-masculinity, north-south, scientific-intuitive, power- body, and establishment-counter-culture. She intends to highlight women’s and men’s reappropriation of feminine traits to challenge dominant models.
Curated by Marta Ponsa, this exhibition presents two projects: Luna Park (2018) and Del maiale non si butta via niente (2022). Through photography, video and installation, the works open a dialogue around the notions of control, surveillance and judgment that affect our perception of others, in particular females’ bodies and the marginalized.
The title of the exhibition refers to that of Act II of La Traviata by Giuseppe Verdi, entitled Amami Alfredo. The first name Alfredo becomes AlfredƏ with the “schwa” (used in Italian non-binary inclusive writing) and encompasses women, men, and people with a non-binary identity. Amami AlfredƏ is a call for love on behalf of all living beings, an imploration to love and be loved despite non-normativity, and a prayer to embrace queer and be proud of it.
In the series of three performances entitled Luna Park produced in 2018, Romina De Novellis was invited by curator Léa Bismuth to think about “Vertiges” in the work of George Bataille in the exhibition La Traversée des Inquiétudes, presented at Labanque in Béthune. In response to this proposal, the artist focused her research on our relationship to the body and differences in our Western society by studying discordant or suffering bodies or those subjected to social pressure, such as those of women, those people with reduced mobility, those of the elderly, or all those who go beyond the classical representation schemes. She confronts the exclusion of different bodies with some religious rituals attached to the culture of Naples.
Del maiale non si butta via niente was first performed at the Jeu de Paume in Paris during the exhibition Renverser ses yeux. Autour de l’arte povera (October 2022) in response to Jannis Kounellis’ Untitled (Twelve Live Horses) performance, which was realized in 1969. Dressed in a party dress and surrounded by confetti, the artist locks herself up for a day in a pig breeding cage to denounce how our societies consume animals’ bodies. The violent treatment reserved for them by the agri-food industry (mistreatment, harmful industrial food, excessive reproduction, and birth control) is not very different from what some women may experience. The body, and not only one of the females, is an object to be watched and maintained in a productivist goal. This action, close and far from Kounellis’ performance, affirms a co-presence with the animal and, more generally, a new sensitivity towards the living.
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