Ciriaca+Erre
Epochè – Suspension of disbelief
1 June–7 September 2013
A parallel event of the 55th Venice Art Biennial
Preview: 29–31 May 2013, 15–20h
Journalists can visit the Pavilion by appointment by calling 347 7907534
Opening: Saturday 1 June 2013, 18h
Tibet Pavilion
Santa Marta Church, Venice
(Spazioporto, ex Chiesa Santa Marta, Area Portuale 301239)
Hours: Tuesday–Sunday 10–18h
From 1 June to 7 September 2013, the Santa Marta Church in Venice will host the Tibet Pavilion, a parallel event of the 55th Venice Biennale.
The initiative, organised by Ruggero Maggi, with the patronage of the City of Venice – Department of Youth Policy – Peace Centre, involves several artists who have been asked to highlight together the profound sense of spirituality in Tibetan culture and to create a bridge with sensations to provide visitors with greater knowledge about the Tibetan people, who can be defined as an ethnic minority who risk losing their cultural and spiritual heritage based on concepts of peace and non-violence.
The Italo-Swiss artist Ciriaca+Erre, one of the protagonists of this exhibition, has been selected with the her new work Epochè – Suspension of disbelief forming part of a broader project called Suspended Identities, which she has been working on for several years.
The video focuses on the protection of human rights, with alternating flashes that tell a story: images of gardens, people in prison, flows of coloured sand, horses, Tibetan monks, policemen and fragments of interviews. A shot leads the visitor into a maze of sensations punctuated by whispering voices, the sound of breathing, prayers, creaking and footsteps. You do not exactly know where you are, since Ciriaca+Erre tries to suspend the observers’ judgement so that they can approach the work without prejudices.
The video is entirely shot inside the first advanced program prison of Bollate, focused on the protection of human rights. The men we see engaged in different activities and in the interviews are inmates and prison wardens, while the Tibetans, under the special project in the prison, were asked to meticulously create a sand mandala for the inmates. Tibet and the Italian prison inmates might seem to be very separate worlds, socially and geographically, but for the artist the connection is very strong. In Tibet, monks die of imprisonment, while in Italy the monks go to a prison to create and then dissolve a mandala, a fundamental symbol of their tradition representing impermanence: everything ends and nothing is eternal, only the present exists. At the same time, in the prison, some of the inmates follow a path of self-awareness, and here and there, during the interviews, we understand that they are close to Buddhism, trying to achieve a new balance, to give an order and meaning to things, something they did not have in the world beyond prison bars.
“The two worlds are not really so far apart, everything comes and goes as in a circle, nothing has an independent existence,” says Ciriaca+Erre. This year, in fact, the European Human Rights Court in Strasbourg has condemned Italy in relation to the country’s prison system for the “violation of human rights, torture and inhuman and degrading treatment”, the same rights that have been violated in Tibet for years, inducing many monks to set fire to themselves in the hope of breaking the terrible silence and stimulating the willingness to change among those who have the power to trigger this change.
Ciriaca+Erre, through her work, asks whether we can imagine social change with a reawakening of conscience that does not regard one country only but a human dimension of growth.
Ciriaca+Erre: visual artist, performer, videomaker
She is an Italian artist living in Switzerland. She loves different languages and expressive codes. Raising doubts, disputing, implanting an idea and a chain of ideas: this is the hallmark of Ciriaca+Erre’s art. Her current work is focused on identity as a paradoxical dimension between a physical and mental state. Her works have been on display with those of internationally famous artists such as Bruce Nauman, Nam June Paik, Marina Abramovic, Vito Acconci, Merce Cunningham, Jan Fabre, Shilpa Gupta and others. In 2010 she received special mention by the Jury of the 3rd Terna Award.
She has exhibited in renowned museums such as the MAMM Multimedia Art Museum in Moscow, MACRO Testaccio Rome, the Museo della Permanente in Milan, the Civic Museums at the European Photography Festival in Reggio Emilia, and in the most exclusive rooms at the Palazzo Bagatti Valsecchi in Milan, the Palazzo Ducale in Genoa, the Stelline Foundation in Milan, the Palazzo Collicola in Spoleto, and the Italian Culture Institute in Berlin. Her performances have enlivened major artistic venues such as the Mamàs Theatre, one of the most innovative locations in New York, the Italian Culture Institute in Los Angeles and the Palazzo Reale in Milan.
Ciriaca+Erre Press Office:
CLP Relazioni Pubbliche
Anna Defrancesco
T 02 36 755 700 / anna.defrancesco [at] clponline.it / www.clponline.it
Press release and images at www.clponline.it.
Roberta Riassetto
T 0041 766799394 / 0039 3477907534 / ufficiostampa [at] ciriacaerre.com