But why wizarding world?
The magical world takes its inspiration from the book of the same name by the Neapolitan anthropologist Ernesto de Martino (1908-65), published immediately after the Second World War and dedicated to the study of magic as a tool through which various cultures and populations react to situations of crisis and to the inability to understand and shape the world.
As part of his project, Alemani invited Giorgio Andreotta Calò, Roberto Cuoghi and Adelita Husni-Bey to create for Il mondo
magicalthree new projects, specially commissioned and produced for the Pavilion, which will be unveiled in detail only in
occasion of the opening of the Pavilion during the inaugural days of the 2017 Art Biennale, from 10 to 12 May.
“The work of Giorgio Andreotta Calò, Roberto Cuoghi and Adelita Husni-Bey proposes a renewed trust in the transformative power
imagination – says the Curator Cecilia Alemani – These three artists share a vision of art as the creation of universes
parallels in which individual cosmologies and collective utopias mix. Through multiple references to the magical, the fantastic and the fabled, Andreotta Calò, Cuoghi and Husni-Bey create tools through which to inhabit the world in all its richness and
multiplicity. In their works reality is reinvented now with fantasy and play, now with poetry and imagination: theirs is a story interwoven with myths, rituals, beliefs and fairy tales. In these references, the three invited artists seek not an escape route into the depths of the irrational, but a cognitive means with which to face and reconstruct reality."
The decision to invite a reduced number of artists compared to the past responds to the need to align the Italian Pavilion with the other national pavilions present at the Biennale, with the aim not so much of organizing an exhaustive overview of all art
Italian, but rather to give the selected artists space, time and resources to present a great ambitious project, which
constitutes an unmissable opportunity in their career and which can offer the public an opportunity to immerse themselves in their world.
“The project that represents the Pavilion this year fully responds to the theme proposed by Christine Macel, who defined VIVA ARTE VIVA a Biennale with artists, by artists and for artists – comments Federica Galloni, Director General of Art and
Contemporary Architecture and Urban Peripheries of the MiBACT and Commissioner of the Italian Pavilion – The magical world proposes a return to the individual, to the imaginary and to the fantastic as tools for inhabiting the world in all its richness and multiplicity. At the same
way the artists wanted by the curator carry out their research in the sphere of magic and imagination, even if reaching results
profoundly different artistic forms both in content and in form.”
The Wizarding World of Project Cecilia German (in the photo) proves to be in perfect harmony with the system built by Christine Macel for the 57.
International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale: VIVA ARTE VIVA is inspired by an idea of humanism that celebrates the ability
of man, through art, of not being dominated by the forces that govern what happens in the world, forces that if left alone can greatly condition the human dimension in a reductive sense.
“This time the Italian Pavilion is entrusted to a curator who is well aware of the evolution of art in various parts of the world, and
therefore able to select, with the necessary courage, works and artists, and thus render the public the most useful service that an exhibition like the Biennale can provide to the visitor”, underlines Paolo Baratta, President of the Venice Biennale.
As part of the exhibition The magical world, a program of educational activities will be implemented aimed at students of the Italian Fine Arts Academies, promoted by the Directorate General for Contemporary Art and Architecture and Urban Peripheries of the MiBACT, which will be divided into a cycle of appointments curated by Cecilia Alemani and Marta Papini.
