Luisa Rabbia
Travels with Isabella: Travel Scrapbooks 1883/2008
June 26 – September 28, 2008
280 The Fenway, Boston, MA USA
Open Tues – Sun, 11am – 5pm
(001) 617 278 5165
Luisa Rabbia: Travels with Isabella, Travel Scrapbooks 1883/2008 is a new video installation by the Artist-in-Residence. Rabbia’s interest in exploring memory and the past has built up a visual dialogue between two personal scrapbooks, her own and one of Isabella Stewart Gardner’s, from her trip to China in 1883.
The artist has used digital archival photographs, as well as, a combination of digital video and computer art to create Travels with Isabella, an imaginary landscape animated with drawings of Rabbia’s past work, digital films taken during her stay in Boston, and objects from the Gardner Museum collection. The video’s soundtrack was composed by Fa Ventilato.
Travels with Isabella is also the title of a new book by the artist documenting this work. It will be released this Fall in the United States, and in the Spring of 2009 in Europe. It is published by Edizioni Charta on the occasion of the Gardner exhibition. Luisa Rabbia: Travels with Isabella, Travel Scrapbooks 1883/2008 will travel to the Fondazione Merz in Turin, Italy, in January 2009.
Luisa Rabbia (b. 1970) is an Italian artist and was an Artist-in-Residence at the Gardner Museum in 2007. She lives and works in Brooklyn and currently shows with the Massimo Audiello Gallery in New York, the Giorgio Persano Gallery in Turin, and with Rossano Ciocco in Milan.
Events
June 28, 1:30pm: Introduction to the Exhibition
Luisa Rabbia and Pieranna Cavalchini, Curator of Contemporary Art
July 31, 7:00pm: Summer Night
Gallery talk with writer and critic Mario Diacono
DJ Concert by musician and producer Fa Ventilato
September 18, 7:00pm: Animation and Sound: A Two-Part Process
Conversation between Luisa Rabbia and Fa Ventilato
September 25, 6:30pm: Memory and Invention and Personal Travel Scrapbooks
Conversation with Alan Chong, Curator of the Collection, and Pieranna Cavalchini, followed by the book launch and signing of Travels with Isabella by Luisa Rabbia.
Publication: An artist book published with Charta will be available in September 2008.
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s 2008 Artist-in-Residence program is made possible, in part, by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Nimoy Foundation, and generous individuals. The Gardner Museum receives operating support from the Massachusetts
Cultural Council.
Video encoding and playback provided by open PLAYER.
Media Sponsor: The Boston Phoenix
