Contemporary Locus 16 | VOCI |
Lara Almarcegui, Elena Bellantoni, Francesca Grilli

Contemporary Locus 16 | VOCI | Lara Almarcegui, Elena Bellantoni, Francesca Grilli
 

Curated by Paola Tognon

PROGRAM May 25th and 26th (Saturday and Sunday)
OPENING: Sunday, May 25, 2024, 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
Free entry

RECORD performance by Francesca Grilli
(Italian premiere with 4 performances)
Saturday, May 25th: First performance 6:30 PM - 7 PM | Second performance 8:30 PM - 9 PM
Sunday, May 26th: First performance 5:30 PM - 6 PM | Second performance 8 PM - 8:30 PM
Paid admission and reservation required, Chiostro del Monastero del Carmine

TALK with the artists Lara Almarcegui, Elena Bellantoni, Francesca Grilli of the project Contemporary Locus 16 | VOCI |
Sunday, May 26th, 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm
Free entry, Monastero del Carmine

Guided tours every Sunday at h 10,30 am

Workshops for children curated by Elena Benicchio from Contemporary Locus

The project Contemporary Locus 16 | VOICES | Lara Almarcegui, Elena Bellantoni, Francesca Grilli is accompanied by facilitation and inclusion tools developed and proposed through a dedicated project created in collaboration with partners HG80 and TTB.

Access to the spaces of the Monastery of Carmine, the areas involved in the exhibition project, as well as the artworks, is supported by a system of signs designed to enhance accessibility and enjoyment opportunities.

Voice inhabits our bodies. Voices inhabit spaces and landscapes; everyday events and collective ones. They surface from images and memories and give rise to emotions. They can be loud or faint, be heard or remain unheard. Monastero del Carmine contains many voices arousing from its very spaces, from warn sandstone, colour residues, from the cotto tiles under our feet or the patches of cement. With the addition the voices of Teatro Tascabile, housed here since 1995 – not so much the stage or the audience voices, but the ones of the theatre group when at work behind closed doors - new voices sheltered here while taking care of its spaces. VOCI, the exhibition project, was born for this place, as part of a wider project titled Acciaio e Cotone, dedicated to its cultural regeneration. Considering the opposite voices of these two materials, brings us to reflect on a time with an abundance of images and a scarcity of voices. Poor in voices heard. VOCI, with artists Lara Almarcegui, Elena Bellantoni and Francesca Grilli, emerged out of such reflections and from a widened team of people. A blunt project, marked by the need to oppose stupor as a necessity and the overabundance of images for mobile phones. And a lean project, leaving room to the voice of the spaces as they are, unpolished and preserved from profitable riqualifications. Thus, an invitation sprang and was accepted by artists using very different practices and modalities to give voice to pressing and sharp current issues: the environment, survival, sociality…

Lara Almarcegui, whose conceptual work focuses on matter and the relationship between architecture and territory, explores the exploitation of the subsoil to reveal the ambivalence of a complex system of environmental appropriation and transformation. The voice that emerges is seemingly silent, coming from the depths of the earth, from research on magmatic rocks such as Rhyolite. The project includes the authorization document for scientific exploration obtained by the artist in compliance with mining regulations and through collaboration with geologist Mirko Demozzi. In her site-specific project, alongside the document, there are three photographs taken by the artist during explorations in the Lagorai mountain range. Almarcegui's research focuses specifically on Rhyolite (a rock commonly known as Porphyry) extracted from the Dolomitic areas, which is also the material used to pave Via Colleoni, the road leading to the Monastery of Carmine.

Elena Bellantoni presents a work around bread and choral singing, which pops up around us with voices, pauses, images of women, disused places, past and present utopias. This work harbours the singular being within a collective experience. It surpassing history without forgetting it and mingles our voices anew in singing Bread and Roses while wearing All Stars sneakers. The four-channel installation is the result of over a year of work that Bellantoni developed in Serbia, Greece, Turkey, and Italy. These countries were chosen by the artist to outline a peripheral Mediterranean where the project's title, ON THE BREADLINE, retains ongoing relevance.

Francesca Grilli activates choral singing in her performance RECORD. The text speaks of young people who struggle to launch themselves into life, who feel the burden of unattainable expectations, who choose to never leave their home. It speaks of social isolation as absence of contact, but also as a form of rebellion against a centralized society. In RECORD we can hear the voices, often crumpled up, of adolescent rebellion. In the inked hands of HAND we can observe those of a community.

To those who wish to visit this project and these spaces something very precious is asked of: some time and some patience. It is recommended to listen to or read the works descriptions and take part in their unveiling. Please walk carefully over the uneven floors and listen to your steps as you exit the monastery. Every inhabitant of Bergamo knows what it means to walk on the “Corsarola” when, after the hussle and bustle of the day is over, one can only hear one’s footsteps over  the fishbone patterned porphyry crossing the medieval city.

 

Lara Almarcegui (Spain, 1972, lives and works in Rotterdam) has built her artistic practice by exploring material aspects of the earth and urban space. She has worked  for over twenty years in different geographies and cities, locating abandoned, unused or forgotten sites to examine contemporary transformation processes driven by social, political and economical changes. In recent years Almarcegui has turned her attention to construction processes and construction sites, in particular to composite materials used in the construction of new buildings and to the relationship between architecture and territory, including an analysis of its exploitation (such as that of quarries and mines). Lara Almarcegui has participated in exhibitions and projects in important institutions, has been invited to numerous international biennials and represented Spain at the 55th Venice Art Biennale.

Elena Bellantoni (Italy, 1975, lives and works in Rome). After graduating in Contemporary Art at La Sapienza University of Rome she studied in Paris and London, where she obtained a MA in Visual Art at the WCA University of Arts London. She is a professor at Accademia di Belle Arti L’Aquila and NABA, Rome. Her research focuses on the concepts of identity and otherness using the body as tool for interaction. In 2023 she opened Dior’s catwalk SS 2024 with the video project NOT HER, turning the Tuileries Gardens in Parigi in an immersive installation. In 2018, she is awarded the 4th edition of Italian Council with the project ON THE BREADLINE, and in 2019, she presented the project’s book at Maxxi, Rome. In 2018 Ho annegato il Mare was selected in the Collaterali, Manifesta12, Palermo. Selected prizes: 2021 premio ArtTeam Cup, 2018  Nctm e l’Arte Studio Legale. Selected exhibitions: Il video rende felici curated by Valentina Valentini, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Roma, 2022, You got to burn to shine curated by Teresa Macrì, La Galleria Nazionale Roma 2019. Bellantoni’s work is in private and public collections: La collezione Farnesina del Ministero degli Affari Esteri, Istituto Centrale per la Grafica, Fondazione Filiberto Menna and collezione Fondazione Pietro ed Alberto Rossini. Her video works are in the Italian Area Contemporary Archive curated by Viafarini in Milano. Selected monographies: Parole Passeggere: la pratica artistica come semantica dell’esistenza, Castelvecchi 2023; Elena Bellanton, On the Breadline, Quodlibet 2019; Elena Bellantoni una partita invisibile con il pubblico, Postmedia Books, 2018.

Francesca Grilli (Italy, 1978, lives and works in Italy and Bruxelles) is a visual artist who uses a multidisciplinary language focused on performative practices, installations and videos in long-term projects. Most of her works investigate, often through sound and in particular the voice, time and generations from different perspectives, all approaching the profound, poetic and political meaning of life. In this perspective, the observation of the other and of the relationships between different generations are linked to social issues that emerge through choral singing, the articulated composition of the voices and the physical presence of the performers, themselves witnesses and authors of a shared research. Francesca Grilli’s projects and works have been exhibited in numerous international venues including Palais De Tokyo, Paris; Serralves Foundation, Porto; Netwerk, Aalst; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; MAXXI, Rome; MADRE, Napoli; Mambo, Bologna; Serpentine Gallery, London. She was  an invited artist at the Italian Pavillion in the 55th Venice Biennial International Art Exhibition and at Manifesta7 Bolzano. With the project Sparks she was awarded the 9th Italian Council, the work (performance and installation)  was acquired within the Collection of Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo.

 

Comune di Bergamo support Contemporary Locus