AlbumArte presents
Chiara Mu | From Here to Eternity
Exercises in Vision. Site-Specific project for a visionary visitor at a time.
Curated by Maria Rosa Sossai
Opening Wednesday, February 18th, 2015 at 6:30 p.m.
February 18th | April 1st, 2015
AlbumArte Project Space, Via Flaminia 122, 00196 Rome
AlbumArte launches its second exhibition in its new location in Rome with a project based on relational performance by the artist Chiara Mu, entitled ‘From Here to Eternity’. Conceived specifically for the space located in Via Flaminia, the project follows the site-specific approach that defines the artist’s practice since years; she keeps tracing stories, details and characteristics of chosen places in order to create and offer a new perception of it, a new aesthetic fruition.
Moving from a recurring question – Can a place perform or can we perform a place? – the artist focuses her practice on a constant dialogue between architecture and performance. She aims to offer relational and aesthetic tools in order to train viewers to a poetic and sensible vision of AlbumArte’ space. Holding each visitor’s hand, Chiara Mu invites viewers to open a conceptual discourse around experiencing and reading other aspects and possibilities of the real, investigating processes that participate in building a sense of identity and ownership of spaces and territories. She traces these practices by collecting materials that not only are related to the ontological and conceptual nature of the exhibition space, but also to its presence in the geographic area in which is located: the Flaminio neighborhood in Rome. Through its intervention, the artist aims to “…live the space as a personal, physical and emotional extension; perceiving oneself as a wall, becoming surface, absorbing any background noise as a dialogue between the place and the body that inhabits it…”
Part of the production costs of the exhibition has been supported by a crowd funding campaign, launched on the international platform Indiegogo. It aimed to propose – in the framework of this new way of financing art – a relationship of direct exchange between performative practices and their “purchase” through donation.
The time of the artist has been offered in a one to one relationship to each supporter: “exercises in vision” have been proposed in the urban area of Rome, from the Flaminio district to specific wider routes inside and outside Rome. The campaign “Exercises in Vision”, which AlbumArte has supported in many ways, is thus presented not only as an economic process but also as a conceptual one, becoming an organic part of the art project for the show.
Furthermore, in order to promote and support the campaign, on January 28th, 2015 in AlbumArte’ space there there was a conversation between the artist, some experts of Performance Art, private collectors and museums buyers, to reflect on the paradoxical nature of time and space when these are presented and perceived as a collectable artworks. We consider the performative experience as a not reproducible one and so far not subjugated to the market’s laws. But it is really like this?
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The visit will be by appointment, one at a time only and holding the artist’s hand, from Wednesday to Friday from 6:30 to 9:00pm. Every Saturday, from 6:30am till 10:00pm.
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Chiara Mu | Born in Rome in 1974, she graduated in 2001 in Stage Design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome and in 2002 in Photography at the E. Rolli regional school. She lived in London for 10 years where she graduated Master in Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art and Design in 2009.
Chiara Mu works mainly in the context of site-specific and/or situation-specific interventions, using installations, performances and video as main medium. She defines herself a ‘time-based artist’ who inhabits spaces and topics, creating relational strategies between the place, the objects and the body’s presence, both hers and of the viewers. Her goal is to define intimately – and sometimes provocatively – the quality of the time that viewers spend in perceiving the work, questioning the very essence of the spectatorship’s role. She has collaborated over the years with different nonprofit English and Italian organizations such as “Cambridge Artworks Gallery” in Cambridge (UK), “Five Years Gallery” and Yinka Shonibare “Guest Space Projects” in London and “Condotto C” in Rome. She also collaborated with the “Edieuropa-Qui Arte Contemporanea” Gallery in Rome and “CIAC” Museum of Contemporary Art in Genazzano (Rome). She produced site-specific performances for Venice Council, Milan Council and she was resident artist in China (Yunnan Studio 493) in 2011, exhibiting her work both in Beijing and Kunming. She is currently running the “Installations & Performance. A Site-Specific practice” workshop at the Academy of Fine Arts of Bologna; she also lectured on her work and on the history of Performance and Installation Art – both in Italian and in English language- for several Universities and Academies such as Royal College in London, Yunnan Art University in China, John Cabot University in Rome, RUFA Academy of Fine Arts in Rome and the University of Milan Bicocca in Milan. the C.V. in full here: http://www.chiaramu.com/mu/exhibitions.html
ChiNa Press Office – china@chinapressoffice.it
Nicoletta Guglielmucci +39 3932231307 – Chiara Ciucci Giuliani +39 3929173661
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Also this year, IRI REAL ESTATE supports AlbumArte’s international contemporary art projects. www.irirealestate.com