Italian Pavilion 57th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia - Il mondo magico

Il mondo magico is the title of the project that curator Cecilia Alemani has chosen for the Italian Pavilion at the 57th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia (May 13 – November 26, 2017), which will present works by Giorgio Andreotta Calò, Roberto Cuoghi and Adelita Husni-Bey.
 
Il mondo magico draws its title from a book by Neapolitan anthropologist Ernesto de Martino (1908-65), which studies how various cultures and populations employ magic as a tool for responding to crises that undermine their power to grasp and shape the world around them.
 
For Il mondo magico, Alemani has invited Giorgio Andreotta Calò, Roberto Cuoghi, and Adelita Husni-Bey to create three new projects specifically commissioned and produced for the Italian Pavilion, the details of which will be revealed only at the opening of the pavilion this May.
 
“The work of Giorgio Andreotta Calò, Roberto Cuoghi, and Adelita Husni-Bey suggests a new faith in the transformative power of the imagination,” says curator Cecilia Alemani. “These three artists all see art as the construction of parallel universes where personal cosmologies merge with collective utopias. Through myriad references to magic, fancy, and fable, Andreotta Calò, Cuoghi, and Husni-Bey turn art into a tool for inhabiting the world in all its richness and multiplicity. Their works reinvent reality, sometimes through fantasy and play, sometimes through poetry and imagination; it is a story woven from myths, rituals, beliefs, and fairytales. For the invited artists, these references are not an escape into the depths of irrationality, but rather a a new way of experiencing reality: it is a tool for inhabiting the world in all its richness and multiplicity.”
 
The choice to invite a fewer artists than in the past is meant to align the Italian Pavilion with the other national pavilions at the Biennale Arte 2017; rather than providing a full overview of the Italian art scene, the aim is to give the selected artists the space, time, and resources to present an ambitious large-scale project that will stand as a milestone in their career, and give visitors an opportunity to explore their worlds in depth.
 

“The project for this year’s Italian Pavilion is perfectly attuned to the theme proposed by Christine Macel, who has called VIVA ARTE VIVA a Biennale designed with artists, by artists, and for artists,” says Federica Galloni, Director-General of Contemporary Art and Architecture, and Urban Peripheries at MiBACT, and Italian Pavilion Commissioner. “Il mondo magico suggests a return to individual, imaginative, fanciful tools for inhabiting the world in all its richness and multiplicity. In a similar way, the artists chosen by this curator all explore the realm of magic and the imagination, though they arrive at artistic results that are very different from each other in both form and content.”
 
Cecilia Alemani’s project Il mondo magico is perfectly attuned to Christine Macel’s overall concept for the 57th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. VIVA ARTE VIVA revolves around an idea of humanism that celebrates art’s capacity to help individuals avoid being overpowered by the forces governing our world, forces which when given free rein can gravely circumscribe the human dimension.
 
“This year, the Italian Pavilion has been entrusted to a curator who is familiar with how art is evolving in various parts of the world, hence capable of selecting artworks and artists with the necessary courage, which is the greatest service that an exhibition like the Biennale Arte can possibly offer to visitors,” emphasizes Paolo Baratta, President of La Biennale di Venezia.
 
In conjunction with Il mondo magico, a program of educational activities geared to students from Italy’s public art academies will be organized with the sponsorship of MiBACT’s Directorate-General of Contemporary Art and Architecture, and Urban Peripheries, in a calendar of events curated by Cecilia Alemani and Marta Papini
The Italian Pavilion has been made possible in part by support from Fendi, main sponsor of the exhibition Il mondo magico.
Special thanks to the donors who played a vital role in the project as a whole.
 
Thanks to the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism, and in particular, its Directorate-General of Contemporary Art and Architecture and Urban Peripheries (DGAAP), for their invaluable aid.
 
Lastly, thanks to La Biennale di Venezia for the ongoing support and enormous professionalism of everyone who has worked so tirelessly to assist the Italian Pavilion team.

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