BEING THERE Exhibition CLAUDIA LOSI
18 September-24 November 2019
Exhibited fo the first time in Ikon's Tower Room Poli Antarctici Constitutio (2019) is an intricate silk embroidery featuring a depiction of the Antarctic as illustrated by Athanasius Kircher in his visionary writings Mundus Subterraneus (1664-65). The piece was fabricated by a dozen women in a period of two years. None of the women was a professional embroiderer: mostly friends and acquaintances of Claudia Losi who attended at her studio and dedicated a few hours of works, every now and then, as a break from their main working activities. A collective work, where each stitch is imbued with stories of life from different countries, conversation, secrets and laughter.
(Thanks to Giuliana Znamerovsca, Oxana Grinchuk, Inesa Martsinkevich, Sanja Temelkova, Camilla Riscassi and many other hands).
BEING THERE // PERFORMANCE Claudia Losi & Collettivo Amigdala
Starting at Ikon, Collettivo Amigdala - an artistic group focused on site-specific operations involving voice as medium - activate Losi's work inside the Tower Room and through a performance along Birmigham canals. Using Ikon Slow Boat as a stage, the performers interact with local singers along the towpath, creating a quasi-spontaneous choral dialogue. Composed by the composer and vocal researcher Meike Clarelli (Collettivo Amigdala), in collaboration with Davide Fasulo, a fusion of reference to folk melodies, love and fight ballads, women workers' chants and children's lullabies are stitched together with text by Losi, improvisations and musical contributions of the participant choirs. The boat, passing through the canal, activates numerous reactions of the performers and singers along the channel. Feminine and masculine voices intertwine, sewing a story that moves on the surface of water and then disappears, like a voice. Moving, standing voices. The intertwining narrative of Being There offers a new history, sewing a story that moves along the surface of the water and then disappears. As voices. The artist collaborated with Meike Clarelli for the first time in 2018 at the project Voce a vento (by Associazione Jazzi, curated by Katia Anguelova) on Monte Bulgheria in Cilento and Vallo di Diano National Park (Province of Salerno). In that circumstance, two female choirs of thirty women crossed some mountain paths spreading, through their songs, words especially written by Losi.
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