Gentilivici A ‘HEN-HATCHED’ EXHIBITION CLOSED TO THE PUBLIC BUT OPEN TO ALL THE INHABITANTS OF THE CONDOMINIUM-MUSEUM
Kaninchen – Haus & viadellafucina16 Condominium-Museum
present
gentilivicini (dearneighbours)
Raffaele Cirianni, Daniele Costa, Genuardi/Ruta, Simona Anna Gentile, Diego Miguel Mirabella, Matteo Vettorello feat. Francesca Arri
and the SezioneAurora collective
hatched by Piera Valentina Gallov *
A ‘HEN-HATCHED’ EXHIBITION CLOSED TO THE PUBLIC BUT OPEN TO ALL THE INHABITANTS OF THE CONDOMINIUM-MUSEUM HOSTING IT
The Kaninchen – Haus association and artists from the 2020 residence project – organised with the support of MiBACT and SIAE as part of the Perchicrea project – proudly present the works created at Viadellafucina16 and, in accordance with the rules imposed by the new Prime Minister’s Decree, are opening a closed exhibition on 7th November 2020 reserved exclusively for the 200 inhabitants of the condominium hosting the event.
Viadellafucina16 Condominium – Museum
Via S. Giovanni Battista La Salle 16 – Turin
www.condominiomuseo.it
A tapestry embroidered with stories about the building’s inhabitants, a carpet you can sit on to listen to stories, pray or eat, an imaginary window onto the past, a visual journey into everyday life in the neighbourhood, a device for measuring positive energy, and a low-relief composed of friezes from buildings in Turin: the exhibition entitled gentilivicini (dear-neighbours) presents the works of artists who took part in the 2020 residence project for young Italian artists organised with the support of MiBACT and SIAE as part of the Per chi crea (For those who create) project.
The rules imposed by the latest Prime Minister’s Decree mean the exhibition cannot be open to the public, but the artists have decided to set it up anyway, envisaging it exclusively for the approximately 200 people living in the building at no.16, Via S. Giovanni Battista La Salle, in Turin.
“Devising an exhibition closed to the outside public and only accessible to the people who actually inhabit the exhibition spaces themselves is a symbolic gesture intended to pay testimony to how art can bring people together, instil a sense of identity, and provide shelter during times of uncertainty – so Brice Coniglio emphasised, an artist and the brains behind the viadellafucina16 Condominio-Museo project. “gentilivicini is an innovative exhibition project, quite remarkably the first to be ‘hatched by a hen’, which is part of a so-called “condominium – museum” art format that is also quite unique and innovative on an international scale”.
Chosen by the community of residients inhabiting the premises and a scientific committee (composed of a.titolo, Guido Costa Guido Costa Gallery, Emilio Fantin artist, Beatrice Merz Merz Foundation, Alessandra Pioselli G. Carrara Fine Arts Academy in Bergamo, Pier Luigi Sacco IULM/IUAV/Harvard University, Anna Pironti Castello di Rivoli Contemporary art museum, Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation and Catterina Seia FitzCarraldo Foundation), the works come from residential projects almost all held during the lockdown or immediately afterwards and, in any case, during the restrictions imposed by the pandemic that made it hard to interact directly with the condominium community and local neighbourhood.
Nevertheless, these difficulties brought out an even more evident desire to find alternative ways of expressing a sense of neighbourliness and collective identity through art.
The artists Raffaele Cirianni (Turin, 1994), Daniele Costa (Castefranco Veneto, 1992), Genuardi/Ruta (Antonella Genuardi, Sciacca, 1986 and Leonardo Ruta, Ragusa, 1990), Simona Anna Gentile (Taranto, 1993), Diego Miguel Mirabella (Enna, 1988) and Matteo Vettorello (Venice, 1986) created works that call into question conventional canons of “artistic production” to serve a multifaceted collective patron in the name of sentiments such as kindness and neighbourliness that can bring together miscellaneous pathways and poetics.
gentilivicini is also an opportunity to present the initial fruits of work by the collective known as SezioneAurora – a ”practical community” composed of young artists from Turin, which was set up with the support of the Creative Living Lab Award – that studies how artistry can energise the local community. The artists belonging to the collective were asked to design new forms of local utopia and envisage how to transform their habitat based around the condominium-museum model, a successful example of how to transform an abandoned location into an open social setting.
This exhibition entitled viadellafucina16 Condominium – Museum – the first international experiment of its kind based on an idea by the artist Brice Coniglio (one member of the ConiglioViola team) – introduces a new line of thinking ,which, following four years’ work, examines how the project might develop in the future, focusing not only on its innovative nature and the results achieved from an artistic viewpoint, but also its social and political value.
viadellafucina16 is one of only a few projects that has managed to reconcile demands for social regeneration with a high-quality art project: now under the spotlight both nationally and internationally, the project has shown it can provide both tangible and intangible benefits for the property hosting it.
Over the last few months alone, over 70 tenants in Italian and foreign condominiums have contacted the Kaninchen-Haus association with a view to adopting the condominium-museum format for their own building. Nevertheless, viadellafucina16 Condominium – Museum has to deal with a paradoxical situation: on one hand, the growing interest of institutions, international artists, public bodies and private investors that would allow what has thus far been daring experimentation to turn into a genuine institution and actively contribute to redeveloping the property in question. On the other hand, all the difficulties (mainly of a bureaucratic-mediatory nature) that the association and its volunteers have encountered over the years and which will require some time out to think after this exhibition, a pause for thought and suspension of operations to rethink what the project might look like in the future.
THE CURATOR
Piera Valentina Gallov
After studying for years at the Hague, getting a master’s in ‘the development of chickens’ and campaigning for the rights of differently-abled winged creatures, Piera Valentina Gallov is the world’s first hen to take over a museum. In accordance with ministerial circular no.211 of 4.08.2020 undersigned by the Minister for Culture, Dario Franceschini, Mibact has officially appointed her to be the new director of ViadellaFucina16 Condominium – Museum of Turin.
https://Instagram.com/divapiera
WORKS ON DISPLAY
Marlene by Simona Anna Gentile (Taranto, 1993)
The Marlene project – named after products sold by the Mele Marlene company at Porta Palazzo Market – assesses the possibility of creating connections by bartering. In exchange for sheets or leftover/waste fabric denoted by the inhabitants of the Condominium-Museum, the artist has designed a collection of numbered shopping bags adorned with images of the sky in Taranto, the city where she was born. The project resulted in the creation of a tapestry embroidered with stories about inhabitants of the property, interwoven with the artist’s own experiences during her residency.
https://www.instagram.com/simona_anna_gentile/
Ogni aurora sulla terra by Raffaele Cirianni (Turin, 1994)
Based on the history of the textile industry, which has been a big part of the Aurora neighbourhood for almost a century, and the concept of gentrification, the project entitled Ogni aurora sulla terra is designed to create a synergy and process of self-awareness among new inhabitants of the condominium and people living in the neighbourhood. During the residence, the artist created a rug you can sit on to listen to stories, pray, taste food and drinks with the most exotic flavours or engage with people from ethnic groups with very different customs and practices.
https://www.instagram.com/cirianniraffaele/
Ball Lightning by Genuardi/Ruta (Antonella Genuardi (Sciacca, 1986) and Leonardo Ruta (Ragusa, 1990))
This project resulted from the two artists’ desire to study how natural light strikes the building’s architectural structures and how this affects communal living. Ball Lightning is inspired by the plaster cornice housing Tiepolo’s fresco “Diana and Aeolus” and it draws on the same composition and dualism through the use of different two fabrics that absorb light to different degrees that both draw attention to the fine details of the design. Inside the Condominium-Museum it becomes a window opening up to an imaginary world that takes the property back in time to when it was a 19th-century building.
https://genuardiruta.jimdo.com/
Dove crollano i condomini by Daniele Costa (Castefranco Veneto, 1992)
Dove crollano i condomini is an overview of shared human experience, the possibility of studying how we interpret life. The visual layout begins from the Condominium in Via la Salle and moves through the people in the neighbourhood from Portapalazzo Market to the Bath Houses in Via Agliè. The project sets out to restore a sense of identity to the people living in the condominium and analyses the neighbourhood by mapping out and surveying various subjects, their actions, and how they live in such a distinctive setting.
https://cargocollective.com/danielecosta
Rivelatore di benessere del vicinato per l’ottimizzazione della tranquillità di un condominio or R.B.V.O.T.C. (02) by Matteo Vettorello (Venice, 1986)
Based on a study into the quality and importance of breathing, the artist has designed Rivelatore di benessere del vicinato per l’ottimizzazione della tranquillità di un condominio or R.B.V.O.T.C. (02), a device for measuring the amount of positive energy inside the Condominium-Museum. After being activated by blowing into it three times, which also helps oxygenate your mind, the sculpture set as waterfall in motion that runs for the same length of time you breathe out. Like a sort of video-guide, the performer Francesca Arri shows visitors how the device works and how to use it properly.
http://www.matteovettorello.it/
Ognuno fa quello che sa fare, salvo me by Diego Miguel Mirabella (Enna, 1988)
Decoration and ornamentation – found in all cultures – are evidence of human presence and also an attempt to constrain the kind of repetitive, fractal processes that nature implements. The project entitled Ognuno fa quello che sa fare, salvo me involves installing a low-relief inside the Condominium-Museum composed of friezes made from moulds of decorations on other buildings in Turin. During his residency, the artist wandered around the city like a pirate, taking possession of sculptures and fragments of public and private buildings, a kind of hack-mapping of Turin and its history, subsequently rendered in sculptural form. The work is part of a more extensive catalogue of creations that Mirabella is working on in various parts of the world.
http://www.diegomirabella.com/index.html
Sezione Aurora is an art workshop set up inside in the heart of Porta Palazzo in the middle of the Aurora neighbourhood. Viadellafucina16-Sezione Aurora is the winning project in the 2nd Edition of the “Creative Living Lab” competition promoted by Mibact’s General Board of Contemporary Creativity and Urban Regeneration.
It is a place for thinking, working and exhibiting that is open to artists from all realms, who want to experiment with and develop new means of interacting with the public, so people are not just involved but actually leading players in the projects being created.
The schedule of events and activities that will take place at “Sezione Aurora” will be based around a collective creative workshop led by Emilio Fantin and curated by Brice Coniglio, Kaninchen-Haus and his network of partners. Those taking part will be asked to imagine how they can transform the habitat they live in: the Condominium-Museum (a successful example of how to transform an “abandoned” placed into a socially open setting in an attempt to create a new form of local utopia) will set the benchmark for the project. The aim is to instil a sense of civic and imaginative responsibility for transforming their surroundings in everybody taking part. This will be implemented through creative-artistic practices focused around their own neighbourhood and the network of relations that could flourish there.
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viadellafucina16 Condominio-Museo
an urban regeneration and collected transformation project based around art
viadellafucina16 is the first ever international condominium-museum experiment created by Kaninchen-Haus in 2016 based on an idea by the artist Brice Coniglio. The project hinges around an innovative residency project for artists in the condominium at no. 16, via La Salla (once called “via della Fucina”) in the Porta Palazzo neighbourhood of Turin, where Europe’s biggest outdoor market is located.
Following an international ‘open call’ (with over 400 candidates from all over the world applying to take part in the first edition), the artists were invited to spend time living in the property during which they created projects and works in the communal spaces in an attempt to trigger off interaction between the various communities living there and help enhance this majestic 19th-century building that had been left in a state of dilapidation and disrepair for the previous 30 years. The winning projects were chosen by the condominium inhabitants themselves (approximately 200 people of different nationalities living in 53 apartments) with the help of a board of curators and experts. The projects were judged according to their capacity to engage the community, interpreter its desires and trigger off new forms of socialising based around co-creation and looking after the property’s spaces.
The condominium – a place where the public and private domains intersect – opens up to artistry as a means of aesthetic, social and cultural regeneration, making it a symbolic place allowing the community to represent itself in the same way aristocratic buildings – decorated by artists – used to embody the prestige and status of noble families. The condominium-museum has become an incredible generator of culture and social innovation hosting works and performances by young artists alongside contributions by great masters like Giorgio Griffa and Michelangelo Pistoletto.
viadellafucina16 represents a completely new way of incorporating artistry in the very fabric of a clearly defined community that intends to draw on an experiment carried out in a confined setting to show how art and culture can become effective means of solving conflicts and bringing about collective change. Thanks to the support of the Compagnia di San Paolo in the OPEN tender, over the last year Kaninchen-Haus has devised a model that will allow the project to be replicated in other properties.
Scientific Committee | – Guido Costa (gallery owner) – Emilio Fantin (artist) – Beatrice Merz (Merz Foundation) – Alessandra Pioselli (G. Carrara Fine Arts Academy in Bergamo / Artforum) – Pier Luigi Sacco (IULM/IUAV/Harvard University) – Anna Pironti (Rivoli Castle Contemporary Art Museum) – Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo (Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation) – Catterina Seia (FitzCarraldo Foundation)
Advisory Board | Laura Barreca (Castelbuono Civic Museum) – Giuliana Benassi (independent curator) – Giorgio Caione (Asilo Bianco) – Alessandro Carrer (ISIA Urbino) – Stefano Coletto (Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation) – Stefania Crobe (independent curator) – Pietro Gaglianò (University of Florence, LABA) – Francesca Guerisoli (Milan-Bicocca University) – Sergey Kantsedal (Barriera) – Paolo Mele (Ramdom) – Giulia Mengozzi (PAV – Living Art Park) – Caterina Molteni (MAMbo – Bologna Museum of Modern Art) – Giangavino Pazzola (CAMERA – Italian Photography Centre) – Samuele Piazza (OGR – Officine Grandi Riparazioni) – Adriana Rispoli (Quartiere Intelligente – Naples ) – Simona Squadrito (Kabul Magazine) – Maria Chiara Valacchi (Cabinet) and the following art facilities: Casa Sponge, L’Ascensore, Like a litte disaster, Carico Massimo, recontemporary.
The collection includes works by Gaia Coals Carboni, Antonella Fittipaldi, Idem Studio, Turi Rapisarda, Iacopo Seri and Sandra Sanchez, Alberto Sinigaglia, Fabio Valerio Tibollo and the masters Michelangelo Pistoletto and Giorgio Griffa.
www.condominiomuseo.it
www.facebook.com/viadellafucina16
Instagram: @viadellafucina16
What do you think?