Starting from the 7st of June and until the XNUMXth of September, Venice, parallel to the fifty-fifth Biennale, will host the Tinet Pavilion. The initiative is curated by Ruggero Maggi, with the patronage of the Municipality of Venice – Department of Youth Policies Centro Pace, and presents artists who have been asked to unanimously underline the profound sense of spirituality of the Tibetan universe and create a sensitive bridge that induces visitors to a greater knowledge of this people .
Among the protagonists of this exhibition there is also the Italian-Swiss artist Cyriaca+Erre, selected with his new and unpublished work Epoché – Suspension of disbelief which is part of a larger project entitled Suspended identities, which has already seen her engaged for some years.
In the video, focused on the protection of human rights, flashes alternate which give life to a story: images of gardens, constricted bodies, flowing colored sands, horses, Tibetan monks, policemen, glimpses of interviews.
A shot leads the visitor into a labyrinth of sensations punctuated by whispering voices, breaths, prayers, squeaks, footsteps.
The observer is not given to know where he is: Ciriaca+Erre in fact tries to suspend the viewer's judgment so that he can approach the work without prejudice.
The video was shot entirely inside the special advanced treatment prison of Bollate (MI), based on the protection of human rights. The men who are seen engaged in different activities and who are interviewed are prisoners and agents, while Tibetan monks have been invited, as part of a special project inside the penitentiary, to meticulously create a sand mandala for the prisoners themselves.
Tibet and the inmates of an Italian prison may seem to be two very distant realities, both socially and geographically, but for the artist there is a very strong common thread.
In Tibet the monks die "in prison", while in Italy it is the monks themselves who go to prison to create and destroy a mandala, a fundamental symbol of their tradition, and a representation of impermanence: everything passes and nothing is eternal, it exists only the present.
At the same time, inside the prison, some inmates embark on a path of self-awareness, of which at times, during the interviews, we sense the closeness to Buddhist philosophy, trying to achieve a new balance, to give order and meaning to things, which in the world out of bars, they didn't have.
“The two realities are not so distant; everything comes back and forth as if in a circle, nothing exists independently,” says Ciriaca+Erre.
In fact, this year the European Court of Human Rights di Strasbourg ha condemned Italy in relation to its penitentiary system for “violation of human rights, torture and inhuman and degrading treatment”, the same rights that have been violated for years in Tibet and for which many monks set themselves on fire in the hope of breaking a terrible silence and stimulating a desire for change in those who have the power to trigger it.
Biographical notes
She is an Italian artist who lives in Switzerland. She loves different languages and expressive codes. Questioning, questioning, triggering an idea, a chain of ideas, this is the nature of Ciriaca + Erre's art. Her current research focuses on identity as a paradoxical dimension between a physical and mental state. Her works have been exhibited with internationally renowned artists such as Bruce Nauman, Nam June Paik, Marina Abramovic ', Vito Acconci, Merce Cunningham, Jan Fabre, Shilpa Gupta and others. The Jury of the 3rd Terna 2010 Prize awarded her a special mention. You have exhibited in prestigious museums such as the MAMM Multimedia Art Museum Moscow, the Macro Testaccio Museum, Rome, the Permanente Museum in Milan, the Civic Museums and the European Photography Festival in Reggio Emilia. in the most exclusive rooms of Palazzo Bagatti Valsecchi in Milan, Palazzo Ducale in Genoa, the Fondazione Stelline in Milan, Palazzo Collicola in Spoleto, the Italian Cultural Institute in Berlin. Her performances enliven important artistic venues such as Mamàs theatre, one of the most innovative spaces in New York, the Italian Cultural Institute in Los Angeles, Palazzo Reale in Milan.
Cyriaca+Erre
Epoché – Suspension of disbelief
Venice, Tibet Pavilion, Church of Santa Marta
(Spaceport, former Church of Santa Marta, Port Area 301239)
from June 1st to September 7th 2013
Opening hours: Tuesday – Sunday 10.00/18.00. Closed on Monday
