MARINELLA SENATORE
UN CORPO UNICO / UN CUERPO ÚNICO
UN CORPO UNICO / UN CUERPO ÚNICO
Madrid, Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Madrid
November 19, 2020 – February 26, 2021
Exhibition views: Courtesy Italian Cultural Institute, Madrid
Curated by Ilaria Bernardi
Specially conceived by Marinella Senatore (Cava de’ Tirreni, 1977) for the Italian Cultural Institute, the exhibition develops in four rooms.
In the Belvedere Room, Senatore pays tribute to the city of Madrid – she lived in Madrid from 2005 to 2011 – with the screening of the film Rosas: Public Opinion Descends upon the Demonstrators, produced by Matadero and filmed there in 2012. This is the third and final chapter of the trilogy of films Rosas (2012), which corresponds to the largest participatory project realized by the artist to date.
The Belvedere Anexo Room is screening The School of Narrative Dance: Ongoing Documentary, which started in 2013 and is always being updated, illustrating the concept and the stages of The School of Narrative Dance, the nomadic and free school founded by Senatore in 2012.
Finally, the Sala Blanca and the Sala Espejos present two new cycles of works, conceived in March 2020 for the spaces of the Italian Cultural Institute in Madrid where they are exhibited for the first time. These works mark a turning point in the artist’s career concerning the concept of participation.
The Sala Blanca hosts the cycle of works Un corpo unico (2020): each one is composed of various elements, spaced at short intervals one from the other and in some cases different in iconographic composition. If seen as a whole and in relation to each other, however, these elements reveal to be the irreplaceable parts of a single ‘drawing.’ They are therefore a metaphor for how each individual, even in his or her singularity, is an indispensable part of the construction of a community understood as a ‘single body,’ that is, united and participating in the achievement of the common good.
The Sala Espejos fosters this reflection on community as a single body to further develop it through a second new cycle of work entitled Autoritratto (2020). By asking visitors to leave a sign of their passage on the canvases placed on the three easels in front of the large mirrors in the room, the artist creates a choral self-portrait of the community. It is echoed by the portraits of women’s bodies that are subtended by the photographic canvases suspended on the walls, hidden in part or entirely by monochrome color backgrounds or paper elements.