Nevine Mahmoud, Margherita Raso, Derek MF Di Fabio: Rosa in mano

With the exhibition Rosa in mano [Handful Pink], Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro presents the second appointment in the 2021 exhibition cycle of the Project Room, an “observatory” project devoted to the most recent developments on the international artistic panorama, this year entrusted to guest curator Eva Fabbris.

The set of exhibited artworks is a dance of positions and physical touches; between presences and absences, wholes and parts, Rosa in mano is an exhibition in which sculpture is offered as a celebration of the vitality of the body. The works on display have a marked tactile, even sensual quality, which is manifest in the choice of subjects and rooted in their executive nature. In the wake of figures such as Niki de Saint Phalle and Alina Szapocznikow, the bodies become fantastic and vital, physicalisations of desire in which sensations mingle. Nevine Mahmoud (London, 1988—lives and works in Los Angeles) and Margherita Raso (Lecco 1991—lives and works between Basel and Milan) both root their practice in a melee with materials and techniques: sculpted or blown works for one, works on a mechanical or handloom for the other. The exchange between the two artists has expanded thanks to Derek MF Di Fabio (Milan, 1987—lives and works between Perdaxius in Sardinia and Berlin). Di Fabio’s work often consists of workshops, the end result of which is of relative importance in object terms. Their poetic attention is shifted onto situations, onto how these can be listened to and interpreted. 

In Rosa in mano Raso presents a new work: a fabric in which the interest in the reproduction of the superimposed silhouettes of bodies takes on an animated, almost narrative direction, showing positions of verve and others that seem to be alluding to falls. Raso’s motifs emerge from the interweaving of threads woven on a Jacquard loom, at times apparently abstract, at times more eminently figurative: in the latter case, what happens on each cloth is the appearance of a whole silhouette of bodies, repeated and superimposed in a rapid pattern that could be reminiscent of the movements of cartoon animation, or short sections of chronophotography.  Mahmoud follows a more “surrealist-esque” trajectory, translating parts of the female body and alluring fruit into the smoothest of marbles or into vaguely decadent blown glass items. In a continuous reciprocity of surfaces, also involving the stands—on each occasion the sculptures rest in turn on opaque or transparent, colored and linear bases, her sculptures playing a double role of seduction—the sensuality of the subject (a tongue, a breast, a peach) is brought out and contradicted by the cold, composed tactility of marble and glass. 

The works of the two artists are at the centre of a workshop run by Di Fabio at Casa di Reclusione [House of Detention] in Vigevano starting from February 2020. Confirming the physical power emanated by these sculptures, Di Fabio takes them metaphorically into the prison through images and stories, offering them to a group of inmates as stimuli for a writing workshop that also passes through engagement with several literary and theoretical authors (James Ballard, Dino Buzzati, William Gibson, Alexis Pauline Gumbs…). In the artist’s words: “The workshop proposes sculpture to the participants as the sum of gestures and decisions to be investigated through narrations and the invocation of what is other”. 

The result of this workshop - which continued partly in person partly in letter form, until mid-September 2021, is this series of audio tracks, titled Cuscino [Pillow] that can act as an audio guide for the exhibition and at the same time as an acoustic version of it to be remotely listened to. On November 21st the complete version of Cuscino will be presented within the show.