Material Self

About

Material Self

Group exhibition and performance programme

featuring

Caroline Achaintre, Chiara Bersani, Benni Bosetto, Rehema Chachage, Julien Creuzet, Sonia Kacem, Sandra Mujinga

18 July - 21 September
Opening 18 July, 6:00 PM

curated by Barbara Boninsegna and Simone Frangi

executive curatorship Maria Chemello

Centrale Fies - Galleria Trasformatori / Foyer / Forgia

Dro (TN)

Free admission by appointment and during the other events of Centrale Fies’ Summer programme.
To book your visit, write to info@centralefies.it

From July 18 to September 21, Centrale Fies presents Material Self, a collective performative exhibition featuring Caroline Achaintre, Chiara Bersani, Benni Bosetto, Rehema Chachage, Julien Creuzet, Sonia Kacem, Sandra Mujinga, curated by Simone Frangi and Barbara Boninsegna, with executive curatorship of Maria Chemello. A performative programme conceived as an activation of some of the works on display will take place during the opening night, on Thursday, July 18.

Material Self is the second episode in a series of group exhibitions dedicated to concepts formulated by Stacy Alaimo as part of her theoretical production. After the first episode in 2023, which focused on the notion of the “naked word”, this year the exhibition raises questions about the idea of the “material self”. In her 2010 book Bodily Natures: Science, Environment, and the Material Self, Alaimo theorises the action and significance of “material forces” and their interface with human bodies. Among the many questions posed by Alaimo, our work focuses on two crucial warnings: What does it mean to be human in these times, with bodies that are inextricably interconnected with our physical world? How does the human body react to powerful and pervasive material forces and record their increasingly harmful effects? In line with post-anthropocentric feminist thinking and paraphrasing Alaimo’s theory, the exhibition Material Self suggests that the “new” relationship between bodies and nature has profoundly altered our sense of self, creating an unprecedented closeness between the human body and the environment, together with a renewed relational understanding of the concepts of “home”, “shelter”, and “inhabiting the world”.

During the opening of the exhibition and the beginning of the weekend dedicated to the Live Works Summit, some of the artists featured in the exhibition will “activate” their respective works on display, revealing to the public the connections between their performative and visual art practices.

In the performance “Babau & Brouny”, Benni Bosetto portrays an act of love between hybrid and monstrous figures, drawing from the iconographies of ancient pagan and carnival folkloric traditions, through mimesis and an animistic eco-feminist process. Two vaguely anthropomorphic figures covered in botanical elements move through the space, exchanging gestures of care and affection. Babau critically revisits the mythical European fairy tale figure of the bogeyman, the ogre, an imaginary monster with indefinite characteristics. A structural, reflexive and unconscious animism that becomes a tool to offer a different vision of nature, towards a unique and interspecies approach to love.

Rehema Chachage's works emerge from an expanded practice, characterised by a research that actively involves her mother and grandmother. Together, they create a “performative archive” which untraditionally “collects” and “organises” stories, practices, rituals, and other oral traditions across various media. In the work titled Nitakujengea Kinyumba, na Vikuta Vya Kupitia (A Home for You I Will Create, with Exit Pathways), Chachage delves into the complexity of the phenomenon of rootedness by performing alongside narratives and memories inherited matrilineally. At the heart of the performance are the transient nature of memory and its inherently fragile political implications.

Drawing on the speculative narrative of the Afrofuturist tradition, Sandra Mujinga plays with themes of the visible and the invisible. Sandra Mujinga is a multidisciplinary artist and musician whose works negotiate issues of self-representation and preservation, appearance and opacity, through an interdisciplinary practice that often subverts the traditional identity politics of presence. The three sculptures that comprise her work Touch Face are seemingly guarding the space, standing firmly on two legs. They resemble enormous bodies, or test dummies, in that they are humanlike to a degree, but not completely. Their physiologies and the title are inspired by elephants’ habit of touching their faces with their trunks, a motion that serves no immediate purpose other than providing the animal with a pleasant sensation. Mujinga imagines alternatives, and proposes invisibility as a survival strategy and a conceptual tool to critically observe – without being seen – our political reality. The faces of the sculptures are covered by prolonged hoodies, an item of clothing used by police for racial profiling, but also a recent symbol of protest. As political signifiers to raise complex social and racial issues, these works ponder how visibility can be weaponised.

Sonia Kacem focuses her creative attention on the concept of ornament within an artwork. One defining aspect of her recent productions lies in the nuanced integration of calligraphic gestures, which provide her works with a sense of fluidity and motion. This approach is particularly evident in lithographic formats and ceramic painting. The captivating forms of her works can be traced to the various experiences the artist has had in Tunis, Geneva, Amsterdam, Brussels, and Cairo. Each place contributes to the evolution of a distinctive gestural language, drawing from sketches and doodles made in these diverse contexts. Moving between abstraction and ornament through the medium of lithography, these works transform into a visual and tactile language, inviting viewers to explore the intricate dialogue between form and gesture, tradition and innovation.

Julien Creuzet reflects on the consequences of human action on the environment. In a masterful blend of images and movement, he presents the video titled Mon corps carcasse (...): a collision of chopped and screwed sounds with overlays of archive images, 3D animated objects, and symbols.. What emerges is a loaded and insightful vocabulary, dense with narratives arising directly from a critical reflection on the soil pollution caused by the mass use of the pesticide chlordecone. Extremely toxic and carcinogenic, it was widely used from 1972 to 1993 in Martinique and Guadeloupe by major French and American industrial companies to grow bananas, despite its use being severely banned in mainland France during the same period. The scandal resulted in an environmental disaster that contaminated rivers, plants, animals, and lands, while also causing severe health problems for the local populations. It is a work as poetic as it is factual, revealing an inseparable link between colonial poisoning of both bodies and territories.

Caroline Achaintre works with wool with an extremely intuitive and spontaneous approach, leading the viewer into a tribal yet modernist aesthetic dimension. The characters created by the artist are hybrid creatures that feed on multiple iconographic references inspired by carnival, primitivism, and science fiction. In W.O.O.O.O.F. a large mask resembling a wolf captures the viewer’s gaze, positioning itself as a powerful tool of projection for the individual who observes.

Deserters is an installation conceived by Chiara Bersani as a multimedia and performative device composed of various interconnected parts. In addition to presenting a new challenge for the author, the carpet, the sound elements, and especially the drawings/objects created for this occasion are a way to adhere to the principle of proximity in the absence of the actual bodies that define the scene itself. The performance staged on the large carpet designed by the artist cannot exist without the carpet itself and the accompanying sound environment. Additionally, a series of drawings depicting non-conforming bodies are embedded within woven surfaces hanging on the walls. The title references Virginia Woolf's words in the essay On Being Ill (1926). The artist invites viewers to abandon the vertical position, typical of an alleged state of health and conformity, to adopt a different common perspective.

Deserters places the issue of vulnerability at the centre, understood equally as a subjective, identity dimension and as a shared bodily condition.
The installation, which will also be “activated” by the artist on July 26 during the “Feminist Futures” weekend, showcases the encounter between disabled bodies called to leave a mark of their passage on the large carpet that includes and figuratively represents them. The gestures and moans generated by this encounter challenge the stereotypes related to the intimate, identity, and sexual sphere that often affect people with disabilities, attributing a political significance to the presence of the body on stage – the vulnerable body as representative of all existing bodies.

The opening of Material Self also marks the launch of Centrale Fies’ summer programme, which will also include the annual “summit” dedicated to Live Works - Free School of Performance, from July 19 to July 21. The group exhibition will run from July 22 to September 21 and will be accessible during the further summer events or by appointment.

During this first weekend, the fellows of Live Works Vol. 11 will present the results of their year-long affiliation with Centrale Fies: Eloy Cruz del Prado, Alessandra Ferrini, Liina Magnea, Melis Tezkan with Nil Yalter (Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale Arte 2024), and Valerie Tameu (selected for the Agitu Ideo Gudeta fellowship 2023). The fellowship, conceived as an affirmative action, sees sociologist and curator Mackda Ghebremariam Tesfaù and curator and activist Justin Randolph Thompson join Centrale Fies' curatorial board. This decolonial vision translates into action to create tools to counteract ethno-racial discrimination in the field of performative artistic research, facilitating access for racialised individuals.

Following the same programme of artistic residencies and free school is Mohamed-Ali Ltaief (with Tarxun and Lamin Fofana), an artist selected by the Consortium Commission Mophradat in collaboration with the LIVE WORKS curatorial board. Such collaboration between Centrale Fies and the Mophradat platform aims to support the “Arab world” in the field of contemporary arts. As every year, the Fellows will be accompanied by established Guest Artists such as Sammy Baloji (visual artist, special mention at the 18th Exhibition The Laboratory of the Future, Venice Biennale Architecture 2023), Sama’ Abdulhadi (Palestinian DJ, activist, and feminist who has performed on the world's most famous stages including Coachella and Glastonbury), and Kae Tempest (poet and rapper, Silver Lion at the Venice Biennale Teatro 2021) with their Acapella Performance, a powerful spoken word performance characteristic of their poetic production.

Centrale Fies will continue its new ticketing policy which was launched last year. In addition to the many free events, 4 price bands will be active. At the invitation of “PAY WHAT YOU WANT” each visitor will be able to choose according to the kind of relationship one wants to establish with the centre.  Each band no longer corresponds to a category, as in the past, of subscribers, operators, students, etc., but to actions that anyone can choose to do: explore (5€), appreciate (10€), love (15€), support (20€).

A campsite will be available on request to welcome young people from the university world. “Camping Fies” is a base camp for students of any faculty or academy. In addition, to facilitate the arrival of the public, car sharing and logistics initiatives will be shared on Centrale Fies social media channels.