“They are viscera that live a life of their own, thinking hybrids that are beginning to occupy (my) world” – this is how Bergamo artist Camilla Marinoni (b. 1979) introduces her site-specific intervention at the Traffic Gallery in Bergamo, which opened on 24 June. Camilla’s sculptural works are part of the solo exhibition of the painter Juan Carlos Ceci, with the intention of creating a dialogue with the latter’s canvases and, at the same time, creating a bridge between Bergamo and Brescia, Italian Culture Capitals 2023. The works presented by Camilla, in fact, continue in Bergamo with their second stage, after having been exhibited in Brescia at the Centre for New Cultures MO.CA.
Camilla Marinoni’s installation is entitled Intus – in Latin inside – and is distributed in front of the two street windows facing the GAMeC in Bergamo. On one side, the large ‘bodily’ sculpture composed of nylon, polyester, ceramic, wine, make-up, wood, cotton and tulle, which takes shape from the cast of a bovine stomach. On the other hand, small ceramics, conceived by the artist from a reflection on nature, the body and its role in relation to the world. The works on display are part of a research that the artist has been carrying out for more than two years, in which he reasons about organic forms derived from the observation of the human/animal body. “The focus is on the viscera, the inner monster we have and experience, the unconscious aspects and mechanisms, as well as the theme of the stranger.” – Camilla tells us – “The ones I have made are foreign bodies, living in another world but which I have inserted into our present.“
From the artist’s words, it is clear how her research focuses on the relationship between the body and the world. Specifically, Camilla focuses on the body as a vehicle, or rather, as a filter with the outside world. The body, understood as matter, dictates the rules of subjective perception, reacts to stimuli and is subject to continuous change due to external factors. Similarly, the body – in particular the skin – is the layer of matter that separates what is inside from what is outside. “What if we all took our skin off? What would be left?” wonders Camilla. Her intention is to dig deep, to go inside, bringing to light the depths of the bowels. “In this exhibition, a body is not simply foreign to others. It is also foreign to itself. A body alienates itself, makes itself foreign. And the foreignness is the strangeness to itself of a gushing soul, expelled from the non-place of the spirit. The body is not merely my skin turned outside: it is already itself, the outside in relation to me, the outside in me and for me – opposite to myself, to distinguish myself from humanity.“
The eye moves from a large sculpture, in which it tries to recognise itself, to the small ceramics that are instead unrecognisable. The latter are in fact the result of a creative process that oscillates between reflection and imagination. The artist conceives of foreign bodies, marine species not yet discovered by man, referring to Telmo Pievani’s writings according to which ‘our ignorance about the living species on Earth is four times greater than our knowledge‘. From reading these writings and observing the works of Francis Bacon, always keeping the body as her starting point, Camilla Marinoni creates “a world as yet unknown, inhabited by living organisms not yet discovered. An earthly, science fiction world or a world of animals from the future.“
The exhibition is open until September 16th, 2023 by appointment
Courtesy Traffic Gallery, Roberto Ratti and the artist Camilla Marinoni
Ph Credits Keizo Ueno
