On May 18, 2022, Castello di Rivoli joins the International Museum Day: the power of Museums

Castello di Rivoli adheres to the International Museum Day 2022: the power of Museums, promoted by ICOM, which will be held on May 18, with programming focused on the role of the museum as an area of innovation, in which digital communication and education contribute to making art and its multiple messages accessible and inclusive.

In line with the themes of the Day, on 18 May the Castello di Rivoli offers a dense digital program. Specially designed to be enjoyed through the Museum’s web channels, the proposed appointments are part of ESPRESSIONI CON FRAZIONI. During the Day, the unpublished online versions of a series of conversations between the curators of the exhibition and the artists that took place in the museum on the occasion of the inauguration of the exhibition will be made available. The Director, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, the Chief Curator and Curator of the Collections, Marcella Beccaria and the Curator, Marianna Vecellio talk to the artists in this new digital program. Artists include: AntiGonna and Nikita Kadan, Beeple (Michael Winkelmann), Richard Bell, Anna Boghiguian, Silvia Calderoni and Ilenia Caleo, Enrico David, Irene Dionisio, Bracha L. Ettinger, Agnieszka Kurant, Julie Mehretu, Marianna Simnett.

AntiGonna (Vinnytsia, 1986) and Nikita Kadan (Kiev, 1982) collaborated on the short film Lucid Skin, 2019, whose protagonist is an artist who rethinks his identity by resorting to self-harm as a way to punish his own “masculinity”. The work is presented as part of the exhibition of filmic works and moving images by contemporary artists from Ukraine A Letter From The Front, whose title recalls the iconic Soviet painting of 1947 by Aleksandr Laktionov (Rostov-on-Don, 1910 – Moscow, 1972).

Beeple (Michael Winkelmann) (Fond du Lac, 1981) talks about his NFT (non-fungible token) works and how they represent a new era of digital art, as they use blockchain technology, with which the artist also created the work HUMAN ONE, 2021, present in the exhibition ESPRESSIONI CON FRAZIONI.

Richard Bell (Charlesville, 1953) began his production in the eighties of the last century: through his practice, the artist intends to carry out an operation of liberation that rejects the limiting concept of “aboriginal art” associated with the colonial heritage, opening up instead to a more inclusive idea of contemporary art.

Anna Boghiguian (Cairo, 1946) captures the contradictions and discomfort of the contemporary human being. Her paintings and drawings amalgamate figuration and handwritten texts, transforming themselves into a single body capable of touching the senses. Boghiguian’s art pushes the observer to an empathic dimension with the world and its events, both tragic and comic.

During the conversation, Silvia Calderoni and Ilenia Caleo (Lugo, 1981; Livorno, 1974), artists, performers and philosophers, analyze their first installation Pick Pocket’s Paradise, 2022, conceived specifically for the Museum and centered on ideas of solitudes and communities, present bodies and memories of bodies now absent. The work was conceived as a place where nettles grow. The installation includes wallpaper inspired by a photograph by Frank Hallam, En Masse, Sunners Seen from Pier 45, 1982.

In his conversation, the London-based Italian artist Enrico David (Ancona, 1966) recounts the work specially conceived for ESPRESSIONI CON FRAZIONI, Trenches to Reason, 2021. The large sculptural installation is a collage of materials that expresses the search for a metamorphosis between states of matter and narrates the precarious condition typical of the present.

Irene Dionisio (Turin, 1986) presents the work Mondo nuovo, 2022, a multi-channel video installation developed with Artificial Intelligence that shows infinite combinations of images related to the concept of Eden. The rhythm of the images is marked by Il grande mistero, 2022, a sound installation obtained from the sonification process of the Higgs boson. In their relationship, the two works present the impact of technology and its relationship with the imagination.

The artist, philosopher and psychoanalyst Bracha L. Ettinger (Tel Aviv, 1948) emphasizes the properties of the art of healing and healing the individual and society. Ettinger has her roots in her autobiographical past, in particular in the history of parents who survived the Holocaust, analyzing the concepts of trauma, oblivion, feminine and “matrixial” gaze, of the space of the unconscious and the transition from the invisible to the visible.

In her conversation, Agnieszka Kurant (Lòdz, 1978) reflects on collective intelligence, especially within the digitized world. The artist analyzes the transformations of the human being and the possible future of work and creativity in our age.

Julie Mehretu (Addis Ababa, 1970) talks about painting and the importance of abstract art today. Known for her layered paintings that combine contemporary references with architecture and urban planning, the artist uses photographic images referable to the collective imagination.

Using a variety of expressive media including film, sculpture, drawing, music and performance, Marianna Simnett’s (London, 1986) surrealist-inspired installations speak of vulnerability, autonomy, control, pain, metamorphosis and care and explore the interconnectedness of living and non-living beings.

The conversations will flow into the digital platform of the Museum Digital Cosmos.

Launched in February 2019 in the difficult pandemic period, Digital Cosmos is the virtual headquarters of the Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea. In contrast, and unlike most museums, Digital Cosmos puts the contemplation and experience of real works of art designed for online use at the center of its program. The Digital Cosmos also offers numerous opportunities for discursive insights, lessons and conferences. The Digital Cosmos does not replace a visit to the Museum, nor the uniqueness of the intense physical and emotional encounter that can only be experienced in real spaces and with the body of the works or performances, but adds dimensions and experiences connected to the evolutions in progress and to the new relational models that belong to the human beings of the present.

On the occasion of the International Museum Day 2022 and as part of the Erasmus + European mobility program, the Education Department of the Castello organizes the Erasmus + Project Professional Training Days for the Gallery of Modern Art in Hradec Králové, Czech Republic. According to the main themes of the Day, such as the “power to build communities through education”, and with the aim of “promoting cultural exchange as a catalyst for peace among peoples”, the Education Department welcomes for three days of professional training the educators of the Gallery of Modern Art in Hradec Králové. The Erasmus + mobility project, activated at the request of the Gallery of Modern Art, responds to the request of the Hradec Králové museum to develop research in the field of European scope and intends to offer its educators the opportunity to study and deepen from the point of view methodological experience of the Education Department of the Castello, selected as an international Best Practice.

Launched in 1984 at the same time as the opening of the Museum, attesting to the importance of the educational function in the institutional mission, the Education Department is the beating heart of the life of Castello di Rivoli: with its many activities it makes clear and tangible the idea of a museum as an agora that opens up to the community, a forge of contemporary thought, a center for research and experimentation. The Education Department unfolds an unlimited educational, training, experimental and research potential starting from the work of the artists, the collection and the exhibition programming of the Museum, also thanks to the synergies with cultural institutions in an interdisciplinary sense. A key role of openness and connection to the outside world, always in close relationship with the territory to which it belongs. Today the absolute peculiarity of its work makes it unique not only nationally, but worldwide, as evidenced by the many awards received, including the invitation to represent Italy at the Arts Learning Festival in Melbourne, which came as a result of the Research carried out by Project Zero for the Harvard Graduate School of Education – Senior Director Prof. Howard Gardner.

Further in-depth analysis on the themes of the Day, including the power of the museum to build communities by developing synergies through the enhancement of the artistic heritage, is offered thanks to the online version of a new guided tour of the galleries of the Castello di Rivoli held by the Head of Protection and Enhancement of the Heritage of the Savoy Residence, Alessia Giorda. The visit to the galleries designed by the Messina architect Filippo Juvarra for Vittorio Amedeo II, starts from the analysis of the wooden model made by Carlo Maria Ugliengo in 1717-1718. Fortunately saved from destruction by soldiers during the Second World War, the model was set up again and presented at the Castello in recent months, after a long absence.