Portable Nation

Sabato 11 Ottobre Fondazione Pescheria-Centro Arti Visive è lieta di annunciare la mostra che ripresenta il Padiglione delle Maldive alla 55.Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte-La Biennale di Venezia.
Il Padiglione curato da CPS – Chamber of Public Secrets (composto da Alfredo Cramerotti, Aida Eltorie, Khaled Ramadan) e dai curatori associati Camilla Boemio e Maren Richter, è stato uno spazio eco-estetico, una piattaforma che ha visto attivisti ambientali, artisti e critici lavorare assieme.
Un Padiglione molto attivo, nel quale si sono seguiti, nell'arco dei sei mesi, numerosi eventi paralleli alla mostra principale, fornendo una significativa esperienza estetica e l’opportunità di discutere il concetto moderno di 'romanticismo ambientale' in relazione alla natura e alla cultura delle Maldive. In questo modo, il pubblico ha potuto applicare le proprie conoscenze ed esperienze quotidiane per la comprensione e l'apprezzamento di questo particolare caso ambientale.
La selezione di lavori presentata alla Fondazione Pescheria - Centro Arti Visive nel mese di Ottobre 2014, curata da Camilla Boemio e sviluppata in collaborazione con l'Arch. Claudio Orazi, vuole riproporre il Padiglione in un allestimento site-specific per la Chiesa del Suffragio con il contributo degli artisti: Ursula Biemann, Stefano Cagol, Josephine Starrs & Leon Cmielewski e Sama Alshaibi.
La mostra inaugura l'11 ottobre per la giornata del contemporaneo, in concomitanza con la mostra Art Italiana Oggi curata da Ludovico Pratesi ed allestita nel Loggiato. 
Nel corso della mostra sarà possibile visionare ed acquistare il libro Portable Nation pubblicato da Maretti editore e co-edit da Camilla Boemio - Alfredo Cramerotti - Aida Eltoire e Dorian Batycka, contenente le immagini delle opere esposte, i testi e gli approfondimenti del Padiglione delle Maldive alla 55.Biennale di Venezia. 

Ursula Biemann: Ursula Biemann (born 1955, Zurich, Switzerland) is an artist, writer, and video essayist. Her practice is strongly research based and involves fieldwork and video documentation in remote locations. Biemann investigates global relations under the impact of the accelerated mobility of people, resources and information, and works these materials into multi-layered videos by connecting a theoretical macro level with the micro perspective on political and cultural practices on the ground. The videos are neither linear nor didactic but a reflexive exploration of planetary and videographic organization. The artist had retrospective exhibitions at the Bildmuseet Umea in Sweden, Nikolaj Contemporary Art in Copenhagen, Helmhaus Zurich, Lentos Museum Linz, and at film festivals FID Marseille and TEK Rome. Her work also contributed to major exhibitions e.g. at the Arnolfini Bristol; Tapies Foundation Barcelona; Museum of Fine Arts Bern; LACE, Los Angeles, San Francisco Art Institute; Kunsthalle Brandt Odense; Kunstverein Hamburg; the Biennials in Gwangju, Shanghai, Liverpool, Bamako, Istanbul and Sevilla; steirischer Herbst, Graz; Flaherty Film Seminars, NY and many others. In March 2013, she had a solo show at Neue Berliner Kunstverein n.b.k. The Broad Art Museum of the Michigan State University has awarded Ursula Biemann with a Land Grant Commission for a a new work "Forest Law" to premiere in August 2014. Ursula Biemann received her BFA from the School of Visual Arts (1986) and pursued post-graduate studies at the Whitney Independent Study Program (ISP) in New York where she lived most of the 1980s. Today, she is a senior researcher at the Zurich University of the Arts. Biemann is appointed Doctor honoris causa in Humanities by the Swedish University Umea (2008) and received the 2009 Prix Meret Oppenheim, the national art award of Switzerland.
Josephine Starrs & Leon Cmielewski: They are Australian artists whose long term collaboration has produced media art installations situated at the juncture of cinema, information visualisation and sublime landscape.Their project l'11 ottobre per la giornata del contemporaneo, in concomitanza con la mostra Arte Italiana Oggi curata da Ludovico Pratesi ed allestita nel Loggiato. Incompatible Elements, focusing on landscapes in crisis due to climate change has been been shown several times in Australia and overseas, most recently at the Maldives Pavilion as one of the Parallel Project, Venice Biennale 2013. Starrs & Cmielewski often use play as a strategy for engaging with the social and political contradictions inherent in contemporary life. Their installation, chapel of rubber was created for the Cementa arts festival, in Kandos, in mid- western NSW, February 2013. It was installed in the old nunnery chapel as a shrine to the street machine burnouts that take place in Kandos every January on the Australia Day weekend. Chapel of rubber was selected as a finalist in the Blake Prize 2013. Their past projects include Seeker, winner of an Award of Distinction at Ars Electronica 2007 and sms_origins, a mobile phone texting work that was created for the big screen at Federation Square, Melbourne in 2009. Dream Kitchen, is an interactive stop-motion animation that featured at Transmediale, Berlin and the European Media Arts Festival, Osnabruk, Germany, and Trace a hybrid art installation that used sensor technology and performance to explore biometrics, was shown at Sydney Records Centre, 2002. Bio-Tek Kitchen, a modified computer game was exhibited in Experimenta’s House of Tomorrow exhibition, Melbourne in 2003 and the Seoul New Media Biennale, 2004. Leon Cmielewski is a senior lecturer at the School of Humanities & Communication Arts, University of Western Sydney.
Sama Alshaibi: Her multi-media artwork negotiates spaces of conflict: the aftermath of war/exile and the dynamics between humans competing for resources and power. Recent solos include vs. Him at Lawrie Shabibi, Dubai and Zero Sum Game at Selma Feriani Gallery, London. Exhibitions and screenings include Institut Du Monde Arabe (Paris), the Bronx Museum (NYC), Mapping Subjectivity, MoMA (NYC), and upcoming Fotofest Biennale (Houston). Alshaibi is an Associate Professor of Photography/Video Art at University of Arizona, USA. Sama Alshaibi’s performances, photography and video work probes the dynamics and conflicts between spaces of war and unrest. Expanding recently into multi-media, installations and sculpture, Alshaibi’s work particularly exposes the hidden constraints of human behaviour, exploring the tensions between occupation and exile. Him collection, mark the artist’s use of the body as a signifier of a nation, negotiating between individual and collective concerns that are both political, social and in conjunction with presenting herself as a female protagonist. Alshaibi’s works make not only cultural statements through her Iraqi heritage, but display a quiet reflectiveness in the tensions she presents.
Stefano Cagol: nato a Trento (1969) ha studiato all’Accademia di Brera a Milano e alla Ryerson University di Toronto. Nel 2009 ha presentato un progetto personale in contemporanea al ZKM di Karlsruhe, al Mart di Rovereto ea Kunstraum Innsbruck. Ha realizzato nel 2008 un ‘Solo’ parallel Event di Manifesta 7, nel 2006 un ‘Solo’ Satellite Event alla Singapore Biennale e un Off Project alla Berlin Biennale. Il suo progetto "The End of the Border (of the mind)", commissionato dalla Barents Art Triennale all'estremo confine nord della Norvegia, prende l’avvio dalla diga del Vajont nell’anno del cinquantenario della tragedia e si svolge come un viaggio/spedizione nel 2013.Nel 2010 espone al SUPEC – Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Center di Shanghai in occasione del World Expo 2010. Nel 2013 partecipa alla 55. Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte - la Biennale di Venezia, con il progetto The Ice Monolith, parte del padiglione nazionale delle Maldive.