THE SEA BETWEEN LANDS

From 25th February to 22nd April, 2023

IIC - Istituto Italiano di Cultura Madrid

IG IIC MADRID

By WAC | 18 FEB 2023

On the occasion of ARCOmadrid, the Istituto Italiano di Cultura presents The Sea Between Lands, which brings together three exhibitions whose common thread is the Mediterranean Sea. Works by established artists and promising young artists are brought together in the spaces of the Palacio de Abrantes, the headquarters of the IIC, in a dialogue to reflect on the different cultures that have developed over time in the Mediterranean lands and on the concept of "limit" or "no limit" that this sea can represent.

From 25th February to 22nd April it will be possible to visit Michelangelo Pistoletto's project Love Difference - Mediterranean Sea; Meridian Bodies and Landscapes, organised in collaboration with Studio Trisorio, which will show the work of Marisa Albanese, Umberto Manzo, Roselena Ramistella; and Passages by Giuseppe Lana, in collaboration with the Giorgio Persano gallery.

LOVE DIFFERENCE - Artistic Movement for an InterMediterranean Policy, Michelangelo Pistoletto. In collaboration with Cittadellarte - Fondazione Pistoletto and Giorgio Persano Gallery.

In 2003 Pistoletto was awarded the Golden Lion for his career at the Biennale di Venezia, where he presented Love Difference - Artistic Movement for an Inter-Mediterranean Policy, a project that began in April 2002, coordinated by the Political Office of Cittadellarte.

A large reflecting table in the shape of the Mediterranean basin, surrounded by chairs from each of the countries overlooking this sea, is Pistoletto's work, the symbol of Love Difference. Around this table, in Venice and later in other venues around the world, various activities were presented and developed.

In Pistoletto's words: "Love Difference is a name, a slogan, a programmatic announcement. The movement unites the universality of art with the transnational idea of politics and focuses its activity on the Mediterranean area because it reflects the problems of global society. On the one hand, the differences between ethnic groups, religions and cultures are today the cause of terrible conflicts; on the other hand, there is a dramatic situation caused by the supremacy of the powers that produce uniformity and the levelling out of diversities. [Uniformity and difference are the two antagonistic terms that represent the greatest conflictual tension in the current planetary reality. A politics that leads to "loving differences" is vital for the development of new perspectives in the whole of society".

BODIES AND MERIDIAN LANDSCAPES. Marisa Albanese, Umberto Manzo, Roselena Ramistella. In collaboration with Studio Trisorio.

The exhibition Meridian Bodies and Landscapes brings together works by artists Marisa Albanese, Umberto Manzo and Roselena Ramistella, represented by the Studio Trisorio gallery in Naples. The three artists, although expressing themselves with very different techniques and languages, share common themes that deal with the concepts of body and landscape. Their works vibrate with authentically Mediterranean suggestions and reveal with filigree the richness of an imaginary that can be defined "meridian" because, as it has been written, "Meridian thought is that thought that begins to be felt inside, where the sea begins, when one discovers that the border is not a place where the world ends, but that where the different touch each other and the game of the relationship with the other becomes difficult and true" (F.Cassano, 1996).

MARISA ALBANESE

All the possible facets of Marisa Albanese's work, from sculpture to installations, video and drawing, reveal her continuous exploration of themes related to travel, migration, the complex relationships between man and place, gender and ethnic discrimination. A poetics based on the fundamental themes of modernity and intellectual freedom. Through the use of different materials, with material colours and techniques such as lost wax fusion, the artist constructs an ethical and aesthetic discourse committed to dismantling racism and prejudice, with an attentive gaze towards the other and the social dimension of geographical space.

UMBERTO MANZO

Unmistakable elements of Umberto Manzo's language are the body and memory, elements that the artist has been investigating since the 1980s using heterogeneous materials and techniques such as photographic emulsion, graphite, oil, colours, vegetable glues and wax, which he uses on supports such as paper or canvas. In his "memory archives" he layers his drawings and places them in the thickness of the stretcher, creating on the surface silhouettes of classical figures, profiles of faces, anthropomorphic landscapes, evoking the idea of an infinite narrative that bridges the past and the present.

ROSELENA RAMISTELLA

The result of socio-anthropological research, Ramistella's photographs tell the stories of women, men, animals and the invisible harmony that unites them. Her intense portraits bare the souls of her subjects and their faces resemble the landscapes that the photographer traverses during her travels.

PASSAGES. Giuseppe Lana. In collaboration with Giorgio Persano Gallery.

One of the fundamental points of Lana's research is the autobiographical dimension. The artist develops his works after a reflection on the context that surrounds him, maintaining a very strong relationship with his origins, involving situations, people or events. His analysis of certain places and their problems, often of a political and anthropological nature, is also expressed through a strong relationship with history. Transformation and fluidity are the guidelines of his research, which aims to investigate themes such as aesthetics and identity.

Passages is part of a larger project that analyses mass movement and its management. There are different typologies of movement, among which the best known are those that are forced and/or voluntary. These actions tend towards the freedom of the individual, but also entail many problems, such as border crossings, political sanctions, religious conflicts. In this analysis, the ability of people to adapt to a new environment, which often occurs by degrees, is extremely interesting.

In Passages, Giuseppe Lana has focused on an insect as a metaphor: the mosquito. By tracing the geographical analysis between migration and adaptation, this insect has common affinities that characterise the political and social aspects of the phenomenon. It moves en masse and is constantly in search of ever new areas. It moves from place to place forming huge communities, colonies that migrate mainly from the south to the north also because of (and adapting to) climatic changes. Migration has become a real struggle for survival. The works, conceived as constellations, interact with luminous elements to accentuate a criticality, to create conflict. As physical and sensory obstacles, the luminous structures make the use of the surrounding space arduous, hindering freedom of movement.

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