Human beings appear locked inside cages, while a bird towers over them, itself unable to fly on its own, bound and blindfolded, in a vicious cycle from which there seems to be no escape, which we have triggered. Shaarbek Amankul stages a world upside down, in which our desire to overpower the natural world turns against us. The artist shows us motionless and helpless in front of a boundless Issyk-Kul Lake and with the backdrop of the endless landscape of the Tian Shan mountain range. He often uses references in his works to the nomadic tradition of the Central Asian peoples and their ancient symbiotic connection with the elements of nature, starting with their close relationship with animals.
This work is presented in Italy for the first time.


Shaarbek Amankul (Kyrgyzstan, 1959) is a curator and artist. Coming of age in Soviet times, he was drafted to participate in the war in Afghanistan, fortuitously assigned to a propaganda unit for his artistic skills. Amankul graduated in art and history from Frunze Art College in Bishkek (1980) and Kyrgyz National University (1989). He founded the international artist group Art Connection (2001-2006), the first art initiative in Kyrgyzstan focused on environmental issues, and in 2007 the platform B’Art Contemporary to stimulate a critical art dialogue between Central Asia and the global art world.

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Sacha Kanah (Italia)

Buchi nell’acqua

(Holes in the water), 2022, Sculpture, Kelp seaweed, water, 90 x 60 cm

The work is a liquid sculpture, a solution of water and seaweed, a reflection on “natural processes conducted with unnatural goals.” The artist used Kelp, a particular type of brown algae believed to be among the fastest-growing organisms on the entire planet. The serpent-like structure and its density are determined by the physical and chemical conditions of the environment in which the work was created, while water is used both as a container and as a principle of form. When extracted from its shell, the sculpture becomes a chrysalis, undergoing a process of mummification while still alive, in a reference to sokushinbutsu, a particular religious ritual of voluntary self-mummification once practised by Buddhist monks through an extreme process, both physical and mental.

Artist recommended by Denis Isaia (Mart).

Sacha Kanah (Milan, 1981) has exhibited in group shows at GAMeC, Bergamo, Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna, La Fondazione in Rome and Castello di Rivoli. He has had solo shows at Clima, Milan (2020) and Gelateria Sogni di Ghiaccio, Bologna (2018). Addressing the concept of biomimicry and the idea of transformation, his research reflects on interactions and co-evolution, related to bodily life and material phenomena, including the inorganic world, technologies, non-human organisms and processes.

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Janet Laurence (Australia)

Requiem

2021, Video work, 16 min.

The video work by Janet Laurence presented in the exhibition was created in response to the terrible fires that incinerated millions of native animals in the southern and southeastern parts of Australia between December 2019 and January 2020 in an extremely dry and scorching austral summer. The fire affected areas that are called bushland, meaning natural and wild. The event pushed mammals, birds and marsupials, which are already threatened by our actions, even further toward the brink of extinction. These fires are thus taken as a symbol of the process of devastation to which we subject our habitat. Laurence’s works often occupy a liminal position between art and science by confronting the animal and plant worlds and address the ideas of reciprocity, instability, and transience. This work is presented in Italy for the first time.

Artist recommended by Rachel Rits-Volloch.

Janet Laurence (1947, Sydney) studied in Perugia, Italy, coming into contact with the work of Arte Povera artists and returned to Sydney in 1982 to begin a master’s degree at the newly established College of Fine Arts. Laurence was the Australian representative in the 2015 Artists 4 Paris Climate project during the UN COP 21 Climate Conference, exhibiting at the Muséum National D’Historie Naturelle in Paris. In 2019 she had a major solo exhibition at the MCA Museum of Contemporary Art Australia. 

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Fabio Marullo & Barbara De Ponti (Italia)

Alpina

(Alpine), 2021, 2-channel sound work, 7:12 min and 10 min

After presenting a still from “Staging Silence (3)” in the WE ARE THE FLOOD liquid exhibition #1, there is now the opportunity to see the film work of the recognized Belgian artist in its entirety. Put on stage, many landscapes that are both natural and anthropized appear indifferently “constructed” by us. Human figures are off-screen, and we see only hands intent on placing, moving and removing elements to form sets that are always empty and mute, in a black and white that makes everything uniform. The references go to our illusion that we can bend everything around us to our needs, feeling that we are superior gods who can do anything.

Hans Op de Beeck (Turnhout, 1969) is one of Belgium’s most internationally acclaimed artists. His multidisciplinary practice includes large-scale installations, sculptures, video works, paintings and drawings, which develop reflections on our society and its dilemmas, from the relationship with space and time to the idea of eternity. He has participated in the Venice, Shanghai, Singapore, Kochi-Muziris and Aichi Triennale, and exhibited at MoMA PS1 in New York, TATE Gallery in London, ZKM in Karlsruhe and Reina Sofia in Madrid.

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PSJM (Canary Islands)

La Isla de Hidrógeno

2011, Project, 90 x 440 cm, 90 x 110 cm

Imagining possible futures, the Spanish artistic and activist collective has initiated a multifaceted work in progress, developed around the idea of an imaginary monument for a utopian society. Consisting of a mini energy plant, canary garden, pond and rest area, it also includes 3 “consumption booths” where it’s possible to listen to music, assimilate information and tan with UVA rays. In the exhibition, we see some images of the project, of which a novel is also part, again by the same artists, who confront through narrative an ideal vision of society in the wake of William Morris’s “News from Nowhere.”

PSJM is a creation, theory and curating collective formed by Cynthia Viera (Las Palmas, Canary Islands, 1973) and Pablo San José (Mieres, 1969). PSJM presents itself as an “artistic brand,” thus appropriating the strategies of advanced capitalism to subvert its structures. They have exhibited at Artium, Vitoria (2016), Fundación Miró, Barcelona (2015), Museu Brasileiro da Escultura, São Paulo (2014), A Foundation, London (2009), PS1-MoMA, New York (2003). As of 2018, they founded the Sala de Arte Social at the Gabinete Literario de Las Palmas. They have been included among the 100 most representative artists of international political art in Art & Agenda.

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UNDER 35 ARTISTS:

Micol Grazioli (Italia)

Topografie immaginarie

(Imaginary topographies), 2022, Participatory drawing, 130 x 550 cm, photo, 90 x 110 cm.     Ph: Giulio Boccardi

Through the collective creation of a drawing that responds to a specific creation protocol, the artist invites us to dwell on the idea of interdependence and how our choices affect our surroundings. Participants all begin drawing simultaneously on the same medium, starting with a tiny closed shape, and gradually expanding it concentrically like the rings of a tree. The shapes made by each participant are different and begin to approach the others’. The result is a kind of topography that recalls reliefs and geological movements and collects traces of the relationships and encounters between the designers.

The artwork exhibited here was realized with the public of MUSE on the days before the show opening.

Artist selected in the frame of the open call under 35 of WE ARE THE FLOOD.

Micol Grazioli (Trento, 1989) graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna and the Ecole Supérieure d’Art et de Design in Marseille, where she still lives. She has exhibited at institutions mainly in Italy and France, such as Artmedia in Marseille and the Galleria Civica in Trento, and has made site-specific interventions, such as at the Nuits des Forêts Festival promoted by COAL. In recent years he has developed participatory art projects aimed at different audiences.

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Silvia Listorti (Italia)

Ora

(Now), 2019, Lost-wax cast glass, ground and polished, 31 x 25 x 14 cm

With glass, the artist represents water. It refers to the idea of fluidity and uncontrollability in contrast to the illusion which pervades us of having control over everything, of being able to bend and shape everything to our use in our blind anthropocentric vision. The artist starts from the proximity in French of the words the sea is “mer” and the mother “mère” and asks the question, “How can we immerse ourselves in something that is actually essentially ours?” So she triggers a reflection on our position in the environment we are a part of and uses the glassy material as a skin, a membrane, a threshold between inside and outside.

Artist selected in the frame of the WE ARE THE FLOOD under 35 open call.

Silvia Listorti (Milan, 1987), graduated in 2009 in Visual Arts from NABA in Milan, has been working with Italian and European theatres since 2010, attending Butoh Dance workshops and calligraphy seminars on the meaning of Shodo. In 2019, she enrolled at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in the Department of Painting, graduating cum laude. Her work uses different languages, including writing, drawing, photography and sculpture.

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Giulia Nelli (Italia)

La vita sotto

(Life below), 2022, Site-specific installation, tights, fabric, environmental dimension

The artwork draws on the metaphor of the underground journey, already characteristic of the nineteenth-century utopian novel and then used to denounce the degradation of civilization at the time of the completion of the first industrial revolution. The soil and its unexpected complexity and coexistence of different elements become an emblem of interaction and integration as a perspective for the future. A union - the artist states - that is necessary also between the spheres of thought, culture, economy, urban planning, technology, and science. At the same time, the project is an inner journey, investigating the meaning of life and a pressing perception of emptiness.

Artist selected in the frame of the open call under 35 by WE ARE THE FLOOD.

Giulia Nelli (Legnano, 1992) graduated from the Brera Academy in Milan and received her Master’s degree in Exhibition Design from the Politecnico. Her poetics is marked by the complex interweaving of ties that characterize our being in the world. She has exhibited at the Fondazione l’Arsenale in Iseo, in the garden of the Basilica of San Celso in Milan and at the Museo della Permanente in Milan as part of the Morlotti-Imbersago Prize.

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Giacomo Segantin (Italia)

Looking through the clouds

2021, Video work, 8:41 min.