Curated by Sofia Gotti and Caterina Iaquinta
The 20th Women’s Biennial in Ferrara, to which Gramma_Epsilon had the honour to contribute with the loan of 3 works by Amalia Etlinger, an artist very close to Mirella Bentivoglio and to whom they are also dedicated.
Biennale Donna, a historic event dedicated to contemporary female creativity promoted by UDI – Unione Donne in Italia (Women’s Union in Italy), this year marks its twentieth edition.
From 14 April to 30 June 2024 Palazzo Bonacossi in Ferrara will host Yours in Solidarity – Altre Storie tra Arte e Parola (Other Stories between Art and Words) curated by Sofia Gotti and Caterina Iaquinta, an exhibition bringing together installations, sculptures, performances and textile works created by six international women artists: Binta Diaw, Amelia Etlinger, Bracha L. Ettinger, Sara Leghissa, Muna Mussie and Nicoline van Harskamp.
The project sets out to highlight some of the aspects that have characterised the Ferrara event since its inception and at the same time to enhance its national visibility. The driving concept is to continue to bring women artists to the fore “from the background” while also presenting “a new arsenal of voices” ready to advocate for the need to rethink women’s presence within a world that has become increasingly complex and polarised. Alongside the artists’ works, a valuable selection of historical materials from UDI will be showcased, including archival documents, catalogues, leaflets, banners and photographs, retracing the Biennale’s milestones and evolution.
Curated by Sonia D’Alto, organized by the BTS Como Arte Foundation.
The exhibition is dedicated to the figure of Pliny the Elder, a source of inspiration for many contemporary artists, 2000 years after his birth.
Alongside works by international artists there will be finds from the Paolo Giovio Civic Archaeological Museum in Como, the Natural History Museum of Milan and the Museum of Roman Civilizations as well as precious prints from the Bertarelli Civic Collection of Castello Sforzesco.
Mirella Bentivoglio is included in this singular journey between contemporary art and natural history with 3 works: Le Tavole del Sapere, book-object from 1992, Book with Egg, from 1990, and From Egg to Zero, from 1984.
“It is a short space that suggests infinity”: with these words Jean Grenier defines the Mediterranean. With its problems and its myriad resources, the Mediterranean stands there to remind us of the challenges we face and the need for the salvation of the planet through the realization that everyone’s contribution is needed.
Precisely because of this, it would be useful to think for the Medina Biennial (Malta) the women artists who saw the Mediterranean as a metaphor for a paradigm shift, the possibility of evoking a rebirth. The fact that these are women artists is not to be overlooked, especially since the theme of the Mediterranean in the years between the 1970s and 1990s, the years when most of these women artists were very active, seemed to have marginal aesthetic potential. The themes addressed in their works are borders, plots and warps, as a metaphor for life, an allegory on the idea of travel, exchange and memory. These are artworks by Goddesses who lost and found the perenniality of the theme, of Goddesses rediscovered as evidence of a current discours.
Artists Mirella Bentivoglio, Francesca Cataldi, Chiara Diamantini, Elisabetta Gut, Gisella Meo, Maria Jole Serreli, Greta Schödl, and Franca Sonnino
Athens Art Book Fair is an artist-run initiative aiming to bring together and showcase artist publications produced in Greece as well as to create a link with publishing-based artistic practices (print, online and else) internationally. It was founded in 2019 by Margarita Athanasiou and Michalis Pichler.
Gramma_Epsilon Gallery has been selected to participate as an exhibitor for the fair’s 2023 edition which will take place in Athens Conservatory. The Gallery will showcase old and new artist’s books and limited editions together with its four published monographies-exhibition catalogs.
Non-profit cultural organization Artefact Athens presents The Butterfly Effect, a contemporary art exhibition curated by Kostas Prapoglou, which will take place in numerous spaces of the prominent textile industry “Butterfly Threads – Mouzakis”. The conceptual framework of the curatorial practice of this exhibition involves a poetic and allegorical metaphor of the butterfly effect that lends its name to the title. Curator Kostas Prapoglou invites 41 contemporary artists to present works that will respond to this unique space (site-specific) and context, creating with their visual, multidisciplinary vocabulary, installations, video, sculptures and painting.
Gramma_Epsilon Gallery participates through a site-specific installation of two Italian women fiber artists of different generations: Franca Sonnino and Maria Jole Serreli. Through a grandiose cocoon-installation, made by Serreli, which embraces Sonnino’s textile piece, the project highlights the dialogical relation between intergenerational and collective narratives of fiber art in relation to the space and the history of the Athenian factory.
One of the oldest art fairs in Europe, Art Athina has been active since its establishment by the Hellenic Art Galleries Association in 1993. Its strong institutional presence is realized today by the art fair itself, hosting Greek and international galleries and by its multidisciplinary parallel activities and programming.
Gramma_Epsilon Gallery participates with the project “The Different Revolution”, curated by Paolo Cortese, by bringing to the Athenian public five Italian female artists of the 1970s who have dedicated their life’s work to the mission of female liberation. Highlighting a revolution carried out in diverse ways in a climate of constant protests, the project foregrounds five unique creative talents who fought to be heard through their art.
Artists: Mirella Bentivoglio, Francesca Cataldi, Anna Esposito, Gisella Meo, Franca Sonnino
Fernando Sebastiani’s donation of precious original linen and cotton cloth made by his grandmother Elvira between 1920 and 1950 with a domestic loom, takes the form of a unique cultural encounter. Thanks to the intervention of the invited artists, these precious artifacts can continue to narrate a unique love story to the visitors within the extraordinary scenery of Gubbio.
The artists have interpreted this story, each of them according to the specificity of their language of love which, however, was only the incipit of a story yet to be written. The total freedom with which they worked the sheets allowed them to create highly original works where the memory of the past is composed in a new vision, achieved through an individual creative process.
A particular tribute is dedicated to Oscar Piattella, who recently died, and who therefore is present with a virtual intervention carried out on one of the sheets thanks to the precious of the Oscar Piattella archive.
Artists Toni Bellucci, Vito Capone, Federica Luzzi, Francesca Nicchi, Oscar Piattella, Marilena Scavizzi, Greta Schödl, Maria Jole Serreli, Franca Sonnino
In the temporary exhibition titled ‘Franca Sonnino / Gabetti & Isola’, design gallery Jochum Rodgers presents works by Franca Sonnino (born in 1932): the emblematic Rome-based fiber artist who rebuilds the world with a skein of iron wire and a few spools of cotton thread. Together with her works, the exhibition also displays furniture pieces by designers and architects Roberto Gabetti and Aimaro Isola. The architectural duo opened its studio in Turin in 1950 and it soon became one of the most remarkable professional collaborations in the international design world.
Artists Franca Sonnino, Roberto Gabretti e Aimaro Isola