ARTE FIERA OBSERVATORY

Chiara Camoni
photo

Chiara Camoni (b. 1974) lives and works in Fabbiano, in the Versilia hills.
Her solo shows include the upcoming one at CAPC (Musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux) in Bordeaux; in 2019: About this and that.
The self and the other. Like everything, curated by Alfredo Cramerotti, Mostyn, Llandudno, Wales; Nous, with Luca Bertolo, Arcade Gallery, Bruxelles; Mondi Perfetti, SpazioA, Pistoia. She has participated in numerous group shows. In 2021: IO DICO IO, Galleria Nazionale di Arte Moderna, Rome; On Survival, curated by Caterina Avataneo, Galerie Britta Rettberg, Munich, DE; 2020: Fuori - La Quadriennale di Roma, curated by Sara Cosulich and Stefano Collicelli Cagol, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome; Artifices Instables - Histoires des ceramiques, curated by Cristiano Raimondi, NMNM Villa Sauber, Montecarlo, Principality of Monaco.
For Art City 2021, she was a featured artist in the underground rooms of Palazzo Bentivoglio with 
Ipogea.

Here I am again in an archaeological museum, this time in Bologna for the Etruscan exhibit and the Egyptian Collection in the underground rooms.

I feel a strange, ahistorical attraction for archaeological collections. An attraction that doesn’t lead to expertise, but merely to enjoyment. It doesn’t form any system of knowledge, but just indulges my desire (with some vague implications)

Perhaps it’s because all of those objects – cats and dogs sitting motionless, gold and lapis lazuli necklaces, ointment jars, portraits – were made to be hidden for eternity.
Created to accompany the dead on their voyage to the afterlife, made with maximum skill and precious materials, they were supposed to remain enclosed in absolute darkness and never again be seen.

By our parameters: maximum effort for minimum visibility.

These days we might say the opposite: minimum effort (in terms of time and resources) to get maximum visibility.

And so here I am, one of many, taking part in this double sacrilege: standing in front of those displays on the one hand and, on the other, participating in society’s frenzied race to achieve total illumination and exposure.

Those objects were “charged” by the hands that made them and by the darkness. And they still are, latently, although imprisoned in glass displays and uniformly lighted.

It’s that “charge” that inexorably attracts me, and I wonder how we, as artists, can manage to deal with it every day.

Indestructible obsidian and perishable flowers, preserved in the same way.
 

camoni-op

Bologna, Museo Civico Archeologico