MADE IN MIND #20

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Francesca Pirillo

DIRETTORE RESPONSABILE Dario Carotenuto

MANAGING EDITOR Marika Marchese

PROJECT COORDINATOR Heidi Mancino

CONTAINERS SECTION Forme Uniche

PROOFREADER Sharon McMahon

SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER Gianluca Gramolazzi

CONTRIBUTORS Lisa Andreani Francesca Biagini Guy Marshall-Brown Irene Sofia Comi Benedetta D’Ettore Gianluca Gramolazzi Ginevra Ludovici Marco Roberto Marelli Coral Nieto Garcia Flavia Rovetta Elena Solito

CONTACT info@madeinmindmagazine.com adv@madeinmindmagazine.com

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COVER #20 Coquelicot Mafille

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ISSUE #20

CONTENTS

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CONTAINERS

X-POST. OPERATIONAL IMAGES

by Francesca Biagini

06

PORTRAITS

AUTHENTIC COPY / AN INTERVIEW WITH JONATHAN MONK

by Gianluca Gramolazzi

60 PORTRAITS

34 PORTRAITS

ADRIEN VAN MELLE IN CONVERSATION WITH CORAL NIETO GARCIA

IN CONVERSATION WITH COQUELICOT MAFILLE

by Elena Solito

78 PORTRAITS THERE IS A FOG THAT BICYCLES LEAN ON INTERVIEW WITH GIULIA POPPI by Ginevra Ludovici

54 STREAMS COLOURFUL LIFE CONVERSATION WITH PASCALE MARTHINE TAYOU / Interview by Marika Marchese

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Monk, a Berlin-based artist, employs a wide array of mediums (including that of photography, film, painting, and sculpture), replaying and recasting fundamental works of Conceptual and Minimal art. It’s not a copy, because Monk gives to his artworks new, ingenious and irreverent meanings.

He changes the story: on one hand he pays homage to figures such as Sol LeWitt, Ed Ruscha, Bruce Nauman and Lawrence Weiner; on the other, he reflects on the tendency of contemporary art to have inner references and so, an authenticity in art.

Coquelicot Mafille works, through the technique of embroidery, declined in a contemporary key, drawing a dreamy and playful universe, and an imaginary of stories and narratives, which tell through a lucid lightness and a deep awareness, a melting pot of cultures, identities, thoughts. With embroidery (with thread, painting and adhesive...), writing, together with mediums such as photographs, collages, sound and video manipulations, Coquelicot defines a geography of (above all) urban space that takes on a meaningful value of symbolism.

Adrien van Melle, born in 1987, is a visual artist, photographer and writer based in Paris.

The study of identity, representation and time is at the center of his interests. In order to ensure this, Adrien carries out a self-referential investigation, between the fictional narrative and the autobiography, interweaving different disciplines and supports.

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CONTAINERS is a section, curated by Forme Uniche, that deals with cultural “containers”: physical and virtual spaces, containers that welcome innovative projects, and that are told through the personalities that made them possible. For this issue Francesca Biagini speaks to us of TBD ULTRAMAGAZINE TBD, born with the intention of questioning the contemporary era through the analysis of zeitgeisting facts (paradigmatic of the spirit of the times), making use of theoretical contents and artistic interventions (ULTRA).

STREAMS, the new Made In Mind column, comes from the desire to create a moment of reflection on social issues with established artists and professionals. For this issue we decided to interview Pascale Marthine Tayou, an internationally renowned Cameroonian artist attentive to social and environmental issues, above all, the pollution of the planet, the depletion of energy resources and related conflicts.

Giulia Poppi (b. 1992) is a visual artist based in Bologna. Her work, brazenly hot and material, is imbued with symbolic references that relate to intimacy and mystery. Poppi employs synthetic materials and artificial light to create a plurality of images. These images along with various objects and sketches of artefacts, are orchestrated in complex environments in order to generate bodily and tactile sensations.

Jonathan Monk F.I.N.G.E.R.S., I, II, III, 2015 White Carrara marble (Bianco P) Courtesy Loom Gallery | Jonathan Monk Studio

AUTHENTIC COPY

AN INTERVIEW WITH JONATHAN MONK

by Gianluca Gramolazzi

A lot of people in the art world had tried to write, as fast as they could, a comment under one of the “Restaurant Drawings” of Jonathan Monk (Leicester, 1969). Why are they doing that? To understand that we have to know Monk’s poetry and practice.

Monk, a Berlin-based artist, employs a wide array of mediums (including that of photography, film, painting, and sculpture), replaying and recasting fundamental works of Conceptual and Minimal art. It’s not a copy, because Monk gives to his artworks new, ingenious and irreverent meanings. He changes the story: on one hand he pays homage to figures such as Sol LeWitt, Ed Ruscha, Bruce Nauman and Lawrence Weiner; on the other, he reflects on the tendency of contemporary art to have inner references and so, an authenticity in art. During the last two decades art and the meaning of originality has shifted. The coming of the internet and globalization changed as information was distributed and access to almost all the ideas was available to everyone in just a matter of seconds. So Monk’s appropriations and creations are continuously changing, underlining how art can’t always be the same: two works that share visual characteristics can have completely different meanings, and vice versa. At the same time, he thinks upon the circumstances of sale. First of all he created “Holiday Paintings” for which he reproduced on canvas advertisements for vacations listing locations and prices, and then sold the painting for the amount of the trip. Later, during his temporary life with his family in Rome, he conceived “Restaurant Drawings”: readymades of institutional artists, such as Jenny Holzer or Donald Judd, resurface in the form of drawings on receipts which are sold at the same price of the meal, on the artist’s Instagram profile, to the first who writes a comment. The prices are not so high, sometimes it’s a cup of coffee, but the gesture starts consideration about needs.

During Jonthan Monk’s last solo show in Milan, at Loom Gallery, we had a conversation starting from F. I. N. G. E. R. S., the exhibited artwork which gathers all the main characteristics of his practice. The work starts from Maurizio Catellan’s public monument L.O.V.E.: a giant hand doing the roman salute without three fingers. So, F. I. N. G. E. R. S. humorously recreates to scale the three absent fingers dropped off Cattelan’s monument, as they could be an object trouvée. L.O.V.E. is an acronym in Italian for “libertà, odio, vendetta and eternità”, meaning freedom, hate, revenge and eternity, so Monk asks us to re-activate Cattelan’s provocation: the absent hand of the fascist salute and the sculpture’s confrontation with capitalism in crisis.

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Jonathan Monk The Knowledge - in pink, 2018 12 blinders of purnell’s “Discovering Art” Acrylic boxes Courtesy Loom Gallery | Jonathan Monk Studio

Gianluca Gramolazzi: Hi Jonathan. Your exhibition at Loom Gallery showed F.I.N.G.E.R.S.: three enormous fingers who relate with L.O.V.E., the monument by Maurizio Cattelan in Piazza Affari, Milan. How is your artwork connected to L.O.V.E.?

Can we think of F.I.N.G.E.R.S. as a hack on Cattelan’s monument?

Jonathan Monk: The three fingers relate directly to L.O.V.E. Or certainly appear too.

I guess there is a kind of ironic logic in the work.

Maurizio’s work allows us to believe that three fingers and a thumb have been broken off the huge hand and discarded. Of course the giant digits were never actually fabricated. I like the idea that in our imagination we see the removed fingers etc. - I’ve tried to turn this notion into a reality.

interpretation or for a playful continuation. Even if some of my works do look very similar to other peoples works the initial intention is completely different so therefore the work is completely different.

G.G. L. O. V. E. has a clear political intention. Does F. I. N. G. E. R. S. have it too?

J.M. Yes it does - it relates directly back to Maurizio’s piece. They are and are not inseparable.

G.G. One of your most famous series is “Restaurant Drawing”, where you draw famous artwork on receipts and you sell them for the amount of the meal. I think this is a brave way to create a glitch in the art market system. Is it a method to think again about what is necessary? And also, once you sell it, the price of the artwork grows hugely. Why do you do that?

J. M. Why not ? - I never really think about what may or may not happen to a work once it’s out in the world.

I like the idea that my meals are paid for by someone else. I’m sure that some of the drawings will eventually be sold for more than the price of a humble lunch.

But I’m still hopeful that the majority of the drawings

G.G. As we can see in Untitled Milanese Soft DJ, all your entire production is full of references. It seems to me as a re-enactment of different artworks, but giving them a new meaning, at least a new life. How do you choose the artwork to recreate? What’s the meaning you give to references?

J.M. I’m not sure – I don’t go looking for them.

Certain works do offer the opportunity for a new

G.G. Some of your artworks, such as The Knowledge - in Pink, start from an object trouvèe. Different from Duchamp’s lifetime, the utilization of images is increased, transforming them into a real object that we can use, reuse, and throw away.

J.M. The Knowledge is a literal container for some of my ideas or thoughts on art. The binders or folders encased in the work are Discovering Art – an encyclopedia of sorts... they were the only books on art my family had when I grew up. These volumes contained almost all the art I saw until the age of 12.

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Jonathan Monk Many Others I, 2012 Engraved Sora Lamprophyr Courtesy Loom Gallery | Jonathan Monk Studio

found good homes and that they will stay in place until the printed text on the thermal paper receipt has long vanished from view.

G.G. What is the role of art and artists nowadays?

J.M. I’m not exactly sure. The idea of what art is and what artists do is ever shifting.

Perhaps if these roles were defined then things wouldn’t move forwards... we need to keep the ball moving. This might be our job… Paul Maenz via Seth Siegelaub – art is to change what you expect from it.

G.G. Are you working on a new artwork? Could you give us some anticipations?

J.M. I’m working on a complex piece that relates to a Henry Moore sculpture that helped me at a specific moment prior to my time at art school. A kind of preinstitutional stumbling block. I am trying to open up this structure that helped determine my future. A moment that relates to now and that, without knowing, has had a direct input into why I am writing these words and why you are reading them.

Jonathan Monk Three Copies Of Cock Fight Dance On The Problem Prospective, 2018 Courtesy Loom Gallery | Jonathan Monk Studio

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Jonathan Monk Untitled (Milanese Soft DJ) I - D, 2020 Sewn and dyed cotton canvas with press studs Courtesy Loom Gallery | Jonathan Monk Studio

Jonathan Monk Untitled (Milanese Soft DJ) I - D, 2020 Sewn and dyed cotton canvas with press studs Courtesy Loom Gallery | Jonathan Monk Studio

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Jonathan Monk Bookshelf paintings, 2019 Acrylic on canvas Courtesy Loom Gallery | Jonathan Monk Studio

Jonathan Monk Bookshelf paintings, 2019 Acrylic on canvas Courtesy Loom Gallery | Jonathan Monk Studio

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Jonathan Monk Self Portrait, 2017 Photography Courtesy Loom Gallery | Jonathan Monk Studio

Jonathan Monk Wool Piece V, 2020 Wool Courtesy Loom Gallery | Jonathan Monk Studio

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Jonathan Monk F. I. N. G. E. R. S. (I, II, III), 2015 White Carrara marble (Bianco P) Exhibition View Courtesy Loom Gallery | Jonathan Monk Studio

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X-POST. OPERATIONAL IMAGES Francesca Biagini

CONTAINERS / CURATED BY FORME UNICHE

TBD ULTRAMAGAZINE aka to be defined isn’t just a magazine about contemporary languages, it is a merging hybrid platform continuously exploring the possibilities of not defining itself, while maintaining a structure (zeitgeisting-text-ultra) in which the authors experiment with different themes and forms.

TBD was born with the intention of questioning the contemporary era through the analysis of zeitgeisting facts (paradigmatic of the spirit of the times), making use of theoretical contents and artistic interventions (ULTRA).

The fact that the magazine has an online outlet as well as a paper issue reveals the multiple grammar solutions that TBD adapts in developing and analysing different topics. The research is usually based on the socio-historical political moment in which we live in, the “zeitgeisting fact”. Adding of the –ing underlines the contemporaneity of the fact that we are still experiencing, in a perspective both of moving present and of recent past. The zeigeisting fact is the pretext to start an analysis of a much bigger container. At the same time it includes the contemporaneity itself helping to keep this project fresh and alive, able to bolt towards further researches.

TBD’s structure works on a starting point in which apparently silly and marginal facts, events or stories are used as a zeitgeisting tool, as a symptom of the contemporary setting. After presenting the fact in

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the editorial the essays of the magazine develop, eviscerating and expanding the main fact, broadening the thematic possibilities of the fact itself.

Speaking about this project and this issue in particular – which I am going to write about later – I would like to experiment the same process of developing a reflection from a fact. The anecdote in my mind is one about two Italian flat earthers that wanted to find the end of the earth to escape the virus during the spring pandemic lockup. Starting from this fact I would like to create a number of expanded layers. This episode explains the 2020 zeitgeist quite well: the short circuit of the absurd paradox of an anachronistic image such as flat earth.

It’s just a way to introduce the operative questioning that TBD operates.

Living in a time where new media change so fast and where social networks and virtual reality become the most widespread method of communicating, it is necessary to question how the collective imagination is changing in a steady stream. TBD arises from the need to investigate the new generation and also analyse ourselves (both the readers and the TBD creators).

“The different issues of TBD always start from a zeitgeisting fact, which, as a translator of the spirit of the time, brings with it openings and definitions typical of our contemporary. Without the presumption of defining stories about bio politics, technology

CONTAINERS TBD Ultramagazine X-POST. Immagini operative Graphic by Marco Radaelli Courtesy TBD Ultramagazine

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CONTAINERS / CURATED BY FORME UNICHE

and society, it is natural for us to reflect on these issues, precisely because they belong to our time.”

TBD The possibility of developing a critical method and, as a consequence, critical thinking arises from TBD’s attitude to create a confrontation with diversified issues, avoiding cultural drifts, exploiting the divergent mind that we could all develop, predisposing a general attitude to confronting the present and the becoming that the present involves.

The expanded form of the magazine is created in order to develop the term zeitgeist as a tool for analysis that can capture phenomena in analytically accountable ways. The curatorial line of the magazine allows a self-feeding, full circle reflection about the present.

“When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls. What is to happen next will take place within the four walls of the story. And this is possible because the story’s voice makes everything its own.” ― John Berger, Keeping a Rendezvous, 1991

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The story of our present is the story of viewing images that are constructive parts of our critical definition.

In TBD the graphic and artistic aspects assume the status of a complete autonomous language. Images are treated as free expression and as support of critical theories, being an integral part of the magazine in a more open expressive space. TBD is based on the use of found content, amateur material that circulates on the web. This aesthetic plays with a critical expression of what the zeitgeist can be. The found images repeat the spirit of a collective imagination.

The ULTRA part of the magazine is strictly linked to this process with images. The magazine works with artists in the aftermath in a dialogue oriented to the production of a work that they define as the ULTRA moment. Having a different path compared to descriptive and decorative images, the ULTRA moment is located in the interstices of the subject of the issue, being linked but independent at the same time.

The special issue TBD X - POST, produced with the support of Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation of Turin, and maintains the modus operandi of previous issues, while being a peculiar number with unique characteristics.

Luca Pozzi Akanian Shenron, 2020 Web-site of the bronze sculpture, twitter profile embedded, real-time voice speaker, variable dimensions 3D render Massimo Russo

“We have identified 2020 as an expanded fact: a year of historical significance, capable of redesigning the spirit of our time, in which the pandemic triggered by Covid-19, socio-cultural, health and economic dynamics have on the whole constituted for us a single, not negligible, zeitgeisting fact. To all this is added the fact that for the first time these upheavals involve everyone on a global scale. Approaching an expanded fact does not, however,

Eye tracking integrated with VR reveals human behavior Explorer Research Courtesy Tobii

mean approaching all possible references without offering a reading key, which we have identified in the operative images (concept introduced by the artist and theorist Harun Farocki).�

TBD The globalism of all the facts of this year not yet concluded can contribute to expanding the dialogue in a worldwide manner at the same moment, developing the possibility of creating new meanings from the bottom.

As TBD said, the key of this number about 2020 is the operational image. Harun Farocki was one of the first to theorize about a new form of images created by image making machines and neural network algorithms, in which the machine assume a position of seeing for themselves. If human eyes are becoming anachronistic the selection and parallelism of research images assume a further independent expression as previously introduced.

Operational images are overwhelmingly invisible to the human eye but they have the ubiquity and the capacity of reinventing our collective perspective.

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CONTAINERS / CURATED BY FORME UNICHE

The letter X is a generic affix used to underline the research process and the peculiarities of this number. The main theme of this publication is 2020 as an expanded fact per se. X is also the historical overtures of this emblematic and paradigmatic year from which they spring as x questions and x hypothesis. The year 2020 is like a summa of the spirit of time in its own complexity, paradox and drama and it can be a perfect resume of what the zeitgeist is.

Like a meta-story of a paradoxical short circuit 2020 itself is the emblematic fact on which starting a reflection. 2020 is like an event container in which all the happening facts are at the same level in a coexisting reality.

CONTAINERS / CURATED BY FORME UNICHE

Image from are.na

“We start from the assumption that we do not define ourselves as a magazine that deals with daily news or facts, but as catalysts for a situated theoretical critique, we need a moment of detachment from what is happening.

Due to its definition of expanded zeitgeisting, 2020 is proving to be a year that is difficult, if not impossible, not to mention. The different dynamics that have arisen during these months have necessarily led us to face new theories and changes in the first two issues of the magazine. At the same time, 2020 seems to bring with it events that are presenting themselves in an almost cyclical way, allowing us to deal with some issues with previous knowledge, developed in the first and second issue. The research already begun previously is a useful reading key for the months to come. Through the various contributions, both textual and artistic, we do not pretend to point or analyse the situation with an a posteriori vision, but rather we want to open new questions about the future and point out aspects that cannot be overlooked.

Staying between “X” and “post” is a time reference, as well as the title of the volume, which gives us the useful coordinates to talk about the zeitgeisting fact, the historical year 2020. For this reason, now that we are in the last quarter of the year, we have already been able to elaborate, as far as possible, theories and arguments that make us feel compelled to write about them in this special issue.”

TBD In this new perspective a focus on how art relates itself with the necessity of moving in the digital space is somehow necessary. In 2020 we assisted to a migration of artistic content, creating new and stronger relations with technologies. The obsession of the presence implicates a constant online evolution in which availability and genesis of the work of art become part of the same process. The positioning of the work arises with the work itself. Never before now has the digital image had so powerful an agency on the era, that agency that allows a series of images to change the reality and the environment in which they operate. The agency

Ivan Toth Depeña Lapse, 2016 Image courtesy of the artist From An Artist’s Augmented Reality App Reveals Virtual Art across Miami, and Incites Imagination, Demie Kim, Artsy, 31 July 2016

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CONTAINERS Image from are.na

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CONTAINERS / CURATED BY FORME UNICHE

Image from are.na

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CONTAINERS Image from Are.na

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Image from pixabay

of a new heterogeneous creator and a more heterogeneous observer. Pushing virtual reality is important to underline that there are many realities among which the virtual one assumes a particular position, totally independent, not as a tool for the material reality to move its spatial position. It is like a competition between virtual reality and physical reality. And the competition itself creates the process of critical analysis in the observer, reflecting also on visualizing the artworks through online platforms and how that changes our ways of seeing (I’d really like to see a new series of John Berger’s Ways of seeing set in the digital era).

“We are realizing that already in the period of the first lockdown many projects have migrated

CONTAINERS / CURATED BY FORME UNICHE

Virtual City from pixabay

to the digital world. As TBD we have always tried to think of artistic projects that respond to the needs of a non-live use, but that maintain a formal and conceptual validity designed for the digital, and were not a translation of what was not possible at that time. We think this is the way to go and certainly the art system will have to deal with this situation, with new needs and review the parameters of judgment of an artwork in the digital world. TBD Ultramagazine is a container that allows us to experiment and study possible variations in our present.“ TBD The ULTRA section of this issue will involve two artists: Paolo Ciregia and Luca Pozzi.

TBD Ultramagazine is a project by Anna Casartelli, Irene Sofia Comi, Camilla Compagni, Eleonora Fascetta, Roberto Malaspina, Francesca Manni, Daria Miricola, Sofia Pirandello, Iacopo Prinetti, Miriam Rejas Del Pino.

External contributors to this issue: Lucrezia Calabrò Visconti, Vincenzo Estremo, Marco Mancuso and Domenico Quaranta.

I ran my horse mask painting through Google’s Deep Dream thing... (Somewhat Nsfw), 2016

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Image from needpix

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Frame da Il cineocchio (Kinoglaz), Dziga Vertov, 1924

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CONTAINERS Image from pixabay

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Survival build in Minecraft, posted by u/q3v1 on Reddit

Videogame “Doom”, released in 1993

Thread on are.na “Protest of Deepfakes in Pornography” image from “Banana Fever” website

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Alive in this material world. Are.na

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IN CONVERSATION WITH COQUELICOT MAFILLE Elena Solito

In Gilbert Durand’s The Anthropological Structures of the Imaginary, the Imaginary, the Day and Night Worlds are fundamental in the construction of an individual reality. A reality that man needs to give a sense to the passing of time, which becomes waiting for an inevitable transience. A theoretical framework, the one analyzed, in which Coquelicot Mafille acts (Paris, 1975), of mixed nationality (Italian and French-Danish) who lives between Paris and Milan. Her works, through the technique of embroidery, declined in a contemporary key, draw a dreamy and playful universe, and an imaginary of stories and narratives, which tell through a lucid lightness and a deep awareness, a melting pot of cultures, identities, thoughts. With embroidery (with thread, painting and adhesive…), writing, together with mediums such as photographs, collages, sound and video manipulations, defines a geography of (above all) urban space that takes on a meaningful value of symbolism.

The places and spaces in the city that she chooses are symbolic: places in decline, walls, bus shelters, the store windows and supports of various kinds that become a field of investigation to expose personal poetics through a refined and recognizable style.

Elena Solito: Embroidery is the characteristic of your artistic practice. Through your embroidery you tell stories and your stories originate from writing. Tell us.

Coquelicot Mafille: For me, even before visual art there was writing in the form of poetry, prose in diaries and travel reports. My relationship with the world unfolded for a long time through observation and the written word. In 2010, starting to embroider was based on the same gestures and meditation as handwriting. What I used to tell with phrases turned into embroidered drawing. The choice of embroidery was natural because on the one hand I was familiar with the tools and fabrics because of my mother, a designer and dressmaker, and on the other hand it was intertwined with the temporality of writing, with that particular creative mood. With time, I declined embroidery on other supports, surfaces and with different means. In embroidery there is narrative, we are in time, in memory, in an ancient ritual. It is an instrument of mental peregrination, a palette to draw on and from which to move with thought and connect to previous worlds. The needle and thread, a precise painted line or an adhesive line lead the spirit to translate its intimate language.

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E.S. Looking at your work, I thought of Slowness by Milan Kundera. Reading is an action that involves slowness and attention, but also embroidery. In an association of ideas we find these elements in Lectures. Tell us about the project.

C.M. There is a phrase in that book that says that when things happen too quickly, nobody is sure of anything anymore, not even of themselves. The feeling of the acceleration of time together with an overwhelming flow of information leads to bewilderment. It is certainly a human perception, a product of the mind. Nature’s time is another, it holds the rhythm of things that are formed and stabilised. There is the stratification of all essential moments. In this sense writing and reading inhabit the space and time at the centre of the eye of the cyclone. Dilated, suspended, not oscillating.

Lectures, to be read in French, is an unpublished project of books and drawings, of readers, of a passion for reading that interacts with painting, drawing and photography. Taking up the pictorial tradition realized through the centuries, it proposes portraits of people of any origin and of all ages while reading or holding a book in their hands, together with the title of a book, the author, the publishing house and the date of the

Coquelicot Mafille Femme et baignoire, 2018 Mixed media on paper india 20 x 30 cm - 8 x 12 inches Courtesy the artist

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Coquelicot Mafille Departures skies, 2017 Mixed media on canvas 190 x 160 - 75 x 63 inches Photo Benedetta Casagrande

Coquelicot Mafille Belonging to layers, 2018 Mixed media on canvas 150 x 190 cm - 60 x 75 inches Photo Mariko Atamanenko

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Coquelicot Mafille Woman standing, 2017 DĂŠsordre series Embroidery on print paper and painting on canvas 20 x 20 cm - 8 x 8 inches Photo Mauro Terzi

Coquelicot Mafille Boy, 2016 DĂŠsordre series Embroidery on print paper and painting on canvas 20 x 20 cm - 8 x 8 inches Photo Mauro Terzi

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Coquelicot Mafille, Histoire de la folie, 2019. Lectures Series. Embroidery on 300 gr paper. Photo Luca Contini

Coquelicot Mafille, Nonostante Platone and Marylin Monroe, 2016. Lectures series. Embroidery on 300 gr paper. Photo Luca Contini

Coquelicot Mafille, L’usage du monde and Sofonisba, 2020. Lectures series. Embroidery on 300 gr paper. Photo Luca Contini

Coquelicot Mafille, Les structures anthropologiques de l’imaginaire and Hammershøi, 2016. Lectures series. Embroidery on 300 gr paper. Photo Luca Contini

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Coquelicot Mafille I come from far behind a sentient being full of love truly moving with joy and the knowlegde to feel one great story to walk ahead, 2018 Height portraits Acrylic on wall, Milan

first publication. Lectures is based on the dĂŠtournement of preexisting paintings, personal photographs or images of unknown authors discovered on the web or in open source archives. Out of phase, heterochronic and heterotopic, the chosen titles open up to further speculative waves. Texts that are needed for an understanding of the world, where the widening of knowledge and the refinement of the critical spirit are fundamental instruments of creation and creativity, of personal and social transformation, of cultural resistance. Lectures manifests itself through unique works made either with embroidery on paper printed from original drawings or even on urban walls or shop windows. It underlines the beauty of the gesture, of the physical and mental action linked to reading. With it one questions the importance of the device, of what is written, of the time and presence that reading requires, of its eventual necessity in our days. Lectures highlights the intrinsic relationship between authors and publishing houses, the importance of collaboration between the professions around writing, books and reading and the plural dimensions on which this union opens up.

E.S. We can find your works mainly in the public space. From the formal point of view your works are delicate interventions, with thin and dotted lines, with figures and images in which color predominates. Non-invasive presences. Do you want to talk about it?

C.M. Public space is a tool for sharing messages and beauty. I am interested in the spontaneity of working in the street. I would like others’ eyes to look at it with surprise, to notice something that could go unnoticed. I ask those who pass by an effort of attention, a sharpening of perception linked not only to the space but to their own presence. The fine lines rest on the

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surfaces without filling them, they fit into the context as in a dialogue. My spontaneous urban drawings do not cover or try to impose themselves, they emerge slowly, leaving the stratifications visible, trying to bring out a poetic wonder.

E.S. Now I would like to consider just the technical point of view. You embroider on different surfaces (paper, canvas, wall, glass), with various materials (thread, painting and more). Which are the difficulties?

C.M. The upstream work is quite elaborate. Everywhere I go I collect images and photographs. I draw constant inspiration from what surrounds me and from my personal experience and history even when I refine my research on a specific theme. From there, I create my own preparatory drawings.

From this personal archive - by enlarging, reducing, superimposing images and imagination I compose the story I want to tell whether it is painted on a canvas, on a wall, attached to glass or embroidered. The difficulty lies more in the elaboration of the sign and its meaning than in the manual realization itself which is essentially meditative.

About this initial submerged work, a monographic issue has been published in the magazine Segnature conceived and edited by Paola Lenarduzzi.

E.S. Your works are a stratification of political, social and cultural messages. It seems you want to build a new phenomenal reality, expressed through a playful look.

C.M. I build from reality and learn from it, new can be the way of looking at it. Many of my works are to be read like Coquelicot Mafille Duran Adam/Blessed by a sufi soul, 2016 Acrylic on iron gate, Fertilia

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poems, openings to pieces of life. In the movement that I carry out in my practice, resides an impossible desire, which is to tell all the stories of the world, in which people, gestures, things that in today’s hustle and bustle appear anonymous, delicate, silent yet so present and necessary. In fact, I draw attention to what is ephemeral, like an attitude in the body, an expression you have when nobody is looking, a dance step, a laugh or glimpses of an ancient palace. Just as I choose to represent the plurality of human, animal and vegetable peoples, the mixture of vitality and languages that make existence precious, magnificent and terrible. And in impressing light in details, in dwelling on empty moments, or in translating invisible dimensions, the game, as you write, is an ally of reality. Of lightness and at the same time of research and depth, like going down the rabbit hole. In the urban environment the use of colour and poetry refine the attention and bring lightness. In January 2019 I raised the issue of climate change by investing seven shop windows in a disused bank, and a few years earlier on the windows of a closed bank I presented the faces and names of pioneers of natural agriculture with an inscription saying: The Only Bank Is Earth. A few years ago under the porches of Fertilia I reflected on the action of Erdem Gßndßz, the man standing in protest against the Turkish government, painting him among flying fish and Sufi dancers. In Faenza through the Ass. Sos Donna and DistrettoA, my translation on the theme of male violence against women was to affirm the overcoming of this situation, revealing the personal power and joy, the strength of a spiritual community and a continuity in female mutual support through the figure of a dancer with Coquelicot Mafille Andar per mille alfabeti, 2018 Acrylic on elevator, Milan

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open arms, just as in 2018 I described in five drawings, aspects of friendship and discovery among young women for the launch of Gucci’s Acqua di Fiori perfume, drawing on a universe of escape and cheerful whispers.

E.S. The artist’s atelier is often a way to deal with a series of important questions that are conveyed through art. Tell us about this and how does the participating audience react?

C.M. I have been running ateliers for several years, mostly with children and young people and sometimes also with adults, bringing my experience and my presence. I love sharing what I know and proposing means to investigate one’s own physicality and perception. I want to bring the wisdom of doing by hand, of shifting the mental plane.

Especially with embroidery, the public initially has many prejudices. Fear also, of not succeeding, of not being able. It is satisfying to see noisy and distracted teens who slowly, naturally, concentrate and find solutions in front of an unfamiliar gesture and protest when the hour ends. Last September I conducted a workshop during the Scarabocchi Festival in Novara, working with middle school students on self-knowledge, leading them first to create a collective work of painting that was then cut out so that everyone could embroider independently. Another important experience was Unprepared Hearts, a project funded by the European Union aimed at teenagers to expand the theme of sentimental education through the language of art. For this project I conceived and conducted the Embroidered Feelings atelier with the support of Muba in Milan who was also the leading partner of the project that took place in Italy, Czech Republic and Romania. Here the embroidery came at the end of a process that included the observation of

Coquelicot Mafille La danseuse, 2019 Acrylic on wall, Faenza

images, the choice of words, and an introspective pause.

E.S. At the end of this conversation, I would like to ask you about your plans for the future? What stories would you like to tell or will you tell about this difficult era?

C.M. At this moment I am in the embryonic phase of a project concerning the ancient world. It doesn’t have a name yet, but it organizes my passion for archaeology, the vivid emotion I feel for the artifacts created by humanity that preceded us and the ambivalent relationship I have with museums and institutions. It manifests itself through painting, tracing chosen figures from antiquity, putting them in dialogue with each other and with us. The material fragility that coexists with a resistance close to eternity, the charge of meaning and rituality, the harmony in forms, materials and manufacture, make us reflect on what the contemporary is made of, on what future memory.

Connecting myself to warburgian visions I create a noisy cosmopolitan and humanist sentimental atlas in which ancient presences take voice with very bright colours, becoming very young with a pop soul that transfer to us an amplified, contemplative imaginary, in which we feel the warmth and value of human relationships and skills among themselves and with the environment, a hope that I think it is important to activate at this time. It is not about nostalgia for a hypothetical golden age but about getting closer to attention and knowledge, to the desire to dive into different languages and to tap into intelligences that have been biocompatible. I will continue to work in parallel on projects already underway, such as Lectures, Désordre and Veli, which allow me to change technique, support and interpret the flow of my thoughts.

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Coquelicot Mafille La terra è la sorgente, 2020 Acrylic on wall, Venice

Coquelicot Mafille Siamo specchi, 2016 Acrylic on wall, Palermo

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Coquelicot Mafille Le chemin est inconnu/restore magic, 2019 Acrylic on cotton voile 160 x 200 cm - 63 x 79 inches 59 Rivoli, Paris Photo Francesco Negri

Coquelicot Mafille Voiles (triptych), 2019 Acrylic on cotton voile 200 x 280 cm - 79 x 110 inches Teatro Burri, Milan

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Coquelicot Mafille Reine encore aujourd’hui, 2018 Adhesive on glass, bus shelter Paris

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STREAMS Curated by Marika Marchese

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Pascale Martine Tayou Portrait Photo Lars Skaaning

For our latest edition of Streams, we decided to interview Pascale Marthine Tayou, an internationally renowned Cameroonian artist attentive to social and environmental issues, above all, the pollution of the planet, the depletion of energy resources and related conflicts.

The exuberant art of Pascale Marthine Tayou (Cameroon,1966) is rich in symbolic and technical overlaps. The colour and shapes recall its roots to African culture. As the artist himself says, ”Colour is the tool to make things talk”. The composition of the works is designed to amaze the viewer playfully and profoundly.

The works, many of which are famous, are a cultural bridge between Africa and the Old Continent, such as the Poupée Pascale, refined crystal idols enriched with natural or artificial elements, such as recycled materials, to underline the importance of respecting the environment. The artist collects during his travels, in Africa and elsewhere, but also on the spot, objects, debris of the consumer society, the work is multiple, proliferating, sometimes unexpected, ranging from sculptures to collages, to installations, with its deep recognition.

The works amuse, possess a disturbing and provocative beauty, evoke nature also through other symbols: the egg and the hope of rebirth, the nest and the tangle, the birds and their songs. Clouds of cotton evoke the exploitation of the black population enslaved for centuries on plantations.

The Falling House or Jpegafrica / Africagift, Plastic Tree or Octopus, are some of the most emblematic artworks of the artist. The first for their strong social symbolism, the others because they recall those objects that to simplify life have become symbols of discomfort, just like plastic. How not to forget Make Up ... Peace!, The chimney, like red lipstick in honour of the women of Donetsk who rebuilt the city after the war, blew up in 2015 by militants, or Colonne Pascale, a twelve meters high column of enamelled pots, vandalized in Lyon.

Tayou is not afraid to face the disorder that Man continues to create, bringing out the chaos of our lives, in which we avoid admitting the negativity of certain lifestyles. The artist tackles really hard themes with superb results and disturbing beauty. The positive and the negative of human life.

The artist has been defined as a travelling artist because through the journey he speaks of the experience of life, the power of man’s individuality and the richness of sharing with others. With him, we want to deepen words such as journey, identity, environment, and expand them.

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COLOURFUL LIFE

A CONVERSATION WITH PASCALE MARTHINE TAYOU Interview by Marika Marchese, interpreter Pauline Armellini

STREAMS / PASCALE MARTHINE TAYOU

Pauline Armellini: Thank you for agreeing to do this interview. My first question, what represents for you the journey from an exodus point of view and from a discovery point of view? Can you tell us why you define yourself as a travelling artist?

Pascale Marthine Tayou: We can see the journey on several planes, it can be physical, it can be mental, so it can be a displacement, from a mass to a point, it is precisely the journey of a human being who starts from one point to another point. Travel to places known or maybe unknown. For my part, I think this journey is towards the unknown because I suppose that what I know I have already anchored in me and that I rather want to put myself to the test of the unknown. So the journey then becomes a bridge between what I am and what I am not. And what I know to be, what I could be. In the field of my practice, it is the hunt for discovery, creation, proposals. For me to move in a static or dynamic way is to build bridges between what I seem to be and what I might like to be. So to travel is to be on the move all the time and to always set the counter to zero. You talk in your question of immigration, of physical, geographic displacement, so the journey following the plane on which it is drawn always has a rather intense colouring. Travel in the deeper sense is an important element for the species, therefore biodiversity, even plants travel, beasts travel as much as humans, clouds travel, wind travels, sea travels, so it all transports with itself something and therefore it comes to question the story of the rolling stone that does not collect moss.

To travel is to collect foam.

I would like to say about the trip that I started my first trip simply by lying in my bed and dreaming in my bed.

It was first an internal emigration, this is the greatest journey!

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P.A. I moving on to the second word: IDENTITY. Your works often refer to Africa, but they have occidental elements, you could say that they have a history, both personal and social, before our eyes. A story that speaks of sharing. A meeting of cultures which constitutes the future of humanity. Tribal civilization and consumerist civilization, past and present in close contact. What value do you assign to the contamination? Also, we know that you have changed your identity, can you explain to us why?

P.M.T. We will start with identity, for me, identity is never unique, it is never individual. It’s something plural. We don’t have an identity, we have identities because it is imposed on us. It seems that sometimes according to certain meanings we can believe that we are linked to the origins of our ancestors, we are linked to the origins of our race, we are linked to the thought of the first people who belong to your village. With the evolution of things, the personification becomes of plural origin, “I am only me, only because I have other people in front of me”. I can’t know what I am if I don’t put myself in… with what other people are. So, in the end, there is only the other who is my test, my revealer. In my formal approach, I mix all this up because I believe that the future of this world is Creole, we have no choice. It is not about entering into a forced logic of interbreeding, these are things that are done in a natural way. I must give my being the time to build itself in this direction. I can be black and be blue, green, red. The race has nothing to do with humans. Besides, when we see everything that is happening today, we can see that we as human entities have made a lot of mistakes, we believed that our origins were the origins of others. The origins of others are not our origins until the moment we enter the other’s room. If we stay in our room we can’t be

P.A. Third and last word: Environment.

You told us what travel means, in it we find the power of contamination, of cultures that come together, therefore Identity, we come to know ourselves and the environment that surrounds us.

The environment has always been and is very important to you, so much so that you were one of the first artists to highlight the theme of safeguarding and its respect.

We did notice that in your works there are recurring symbols, among them are there some which represent you more? Can you tell us how the Plastic Tree and the Plastic Bag were born?

P.M.T. You talk about the environment but I don’t necessarily see nature, I see the environment in a more general sense. The environment is everything around us. Those who fight for the environment are often also big polluters and that is a problem. I’ll tell you an anecdote: I once found myself facing a lady who was complaining because there was a group working with me that was doing plastic bag displays in a shed. The lady came, very angry, asking what we were doing and why we were doing this. She was honest about her outlook. For her, plastic bags should not be shown or celebrated. I tried to explain to her. She kept telling

me that plastic bags are polluting, that they should not be shown that way. The first thing I told her was that I wasn’t responsible for making the plastic bags, and if they hadn’t been used, she wouldn’t have seen them and she wouldn’t have reacted that way. The reason I use the plastic bags is because I do what is called plastic arts. I want to justify my profession. She said I was polluting. The lady was dressed in jeans. I asked her if she had wondered how her pants were made.

She started to hesitate. These pants aren’t made by destroying the environment she defended. So she was screaming at someone as innocent as her.

If you attack someone who ignores their fault it does not advance. Because he’s right in his head, he’s not at the same level of thinking as you and even as you reflect with the person you may find that your own thinking is limited. So the environment is first and foremost a question of mentality. In my work, I wanted to sculpt the mentality. I wanted to touch the objects that can question and allow all those they have the chance to meet, to analyze if they have an emotion, to analyze from their point of view, from their education.

I can’t directly explain something to someone who hasn’t learned to see it. Today, I am challenged on environmental issues, I am associated with a defender of the greens. I am not a green person, I am as much of a polluter as you are. I touch on what is difficult to pin down, I show it in my everyday life. I might be ahead of some people, but that doesn’t mean I’m better than others. I am as much a polluter as the others. The polluter is my neighbour. I am an accomplice. We are complicit in our ignorance.

I still remember I worked with students on a documentary in which we talked about humanity, about humanism, about the human. In the film, there were a lot of

STREAMS

ourselves. When you shut yourself in at home, you are playing against yourself. It is therefore important to enter the other’s room. The other’s bedroom is a mirror of myself. For me, questions of civilisation are human questions. We can never link a civilisation to a fixed distribution of the vision of identity because identity is plural. It’s like a colour box. I have an idea because I can refer to the other identities that are in front of me.

If I look at myself in a mirror it means I don’t have an identity.

STREAMS / PASCALE MARTHINE TAYOU

players, and sometimes criminals, dictators, people who did impossible things in their life but who tried to explain how they had met the human despite their bad deeds. While watching the film, what interested me was showing the human side, even the criminal. Someone said, “Sir, I can’t watch this movie”. I asked her why she replied that the one who produced the film is an exhibitor (the film had been produced in part by the Béthencourt family). I replied in this way: “It is not of her in the film, that’s the subject that interests me. If someone gives you a kiss for love, will you tell them that you don’t want their kiss because their mouth has bad breath? You have to take my love. We must not reject everything! You have to ignore the smell of her mouth to take her love.”

We should talk about the environment without using that word. When we use this word, some people turn their heads, very quickly, there are people who pollute to live. They are aware that this is not good. Usually, the big polluter is the one who bans pollution. This is the state!

He is the one who signs contracts with polluting factories. Then we go after consumers.

You said that in my approach I tried talking about it, that’s true, but I think the best way to talk about it is to pretend not to talk about it. I spoke about plastic in Africa. I’m not sure when I started talking about it, I meant to talk about the environment. Gradually I realized that people were sensitive, they told me that I was green.

The best way to talk about the environment is to just be human, kind, kind to your neighbour, kind to the weed in the forest. When it becomes too political a score, it no longer has much effects, because you are linked directly to a group of thought.

It’s like my job. I always say that I am not an artist. I’m just a thug, who doesn’t want to do anything, even if he doesn’t do anything, he still does something!

This is how I build my environment.

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I find a way to get anyone who is interested in what I’m doing to go see reality. I do not have the means to explain to the other what he must be feeling, I invite him to go see for himself.

I was born in Cameroon, where they did a bit of western humanism because they wanted to look like occidental civilization, without understanding their reality. Then they pushed the population to return to consumption. How do you explain to a person who pollutes in Cameroon, who earns money on it, therefore power, that he should not do it when it is the state that lets it happen.

Not long ago I spoke with a French thinker who works in biodiversity and asked him to explain to me, in the history of man, who could be the first green man. He was stuck. He didn’t know when we started to say that you have to be really careful with the environment.

I am not one of the first as you said. I look at the work of some artists before me, for example, Joseph Beuys, with what he called social sculpture. I am talking about mental sculpture because sculpture for me is not necessarily what we see, it is first of all what makes it possible to do things visible, palpable, sensitive. I am not from the school where you think that emotion should just be beautiful. Beauty is also ugly. To translate the beauty of the ugly one must enter into a mental sculpture. Beuys was already interested in the aesthetic relationship between inhabitants and the environment.

To avoid weird behaviour, maybe you have to restructure the mentality, sculpt the mentality, that’s what I call mental sculpting. When we see a large plastic bag, it can push us towards an emotion of preserving our environment but to do it you have to have been educated in this. Otherwise, we don’t.

Thanks to Pascale Marthine Tayou and Galleria Continua for the kind concession of this interview.

identity

environment

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STREAMS / PASCALE MARTHINE TAYOU

journey

ADRIEN VAN MELLE IN CONVERSATION WITH CORAL NIETO GARCIA Adrien van Melle, born in 1987, is a visual artist, photographer and writer based in Paris. The study of identity, representation and time is at the center of his interests. In order to ensure this, Adrien carries out a self-referential investigation, between the fictional narrative and the autobiography, interweaving different disciplines and supports. As much in his installations as in his writings, he immerses the viewer / reader in a literary universe that is both atopic and familiar, which is about to be (re-)invented as many times as history and imagination allow it.

Coral Nieto: I wonder about the way you use fictional characters (Adam, Gabriel and Jules in particular).

Where do these “minor stories”, as Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari theorize it, lead you?

Adrien van Melle: This is a question that raises some interesting points related to my practice. If we refer to Deleuze and Guattari’s definition of a minor language, this is the writing that a minority makes in a major language. I don’t feel like I belong to a minority, I am a man, white, I live and was born in the capital of my country. However, I am sometimes an artist, sometimes a writer, often both, but I do not feel I have the status of a writer, the one with a capital “W”, this fantasized status that includes the gift of not making spelling mistakes, to handle language - and even languages, theoretical, administrative, literary, oral, with dexterity. I don’t feel like I am the bearer of authority with regard to French. Is it because I was a pretty bad student until high school, that mild dyslexia and impaired concentration always made teaching spelling and grammar a nightmare for

as well as my “transparent writing” (this time to use Barthes’s term) bring a form of universality to my work, which involves the very particular. My primary research is ultimately the presence of an emotion, almost poetic, through the recognition of a certain daily life, of characters that are both stereotypical and with blurred outlines.

me?

Should I also delve into my strong interest, which shines through in my work, for my Sephardic family origins on one side and Flemish on the other, to explain a certain form of deterritorialization? It’s possible, but I’m ultimately in a bad enough position to judge.

Regardless, I feel that writing is both an absolute necessity in my work and something that I practice instinctively. My attraction to the everyday, the banal,

Adam, Gabriel and Jules are all three artists, all three men, white, etc.

I think that talking about anthropological investigation is half right, reality plays a very important part, a certain form of materialism too, of attachment to the tangible, but the subjective and the fiction are the main protagonists and it is in fact the effect of reality that I am going to seek. If there is an anthropological inquiry, it is an exploration of the condition of the artist through the

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C.N. How do you work with fiction (symbolism) in communion with documentation? Could we speak in terms of “anthropological inquiry” when you produce these stories?

A.M. I research a lot. Sometimes I need to see the places I’m writing about. I have to know the objects I am describing, I don’t invent so much. However, I have the feeling that what makes the essence of my stories, namely the micro-feelings, the sensations, even the actions of the characters and the narrative context, it always comes from me. It’s very rare that I shoot a character outside of a mirror effect, that’s probably why

Adrien van Melle STAAT / ÉTAT (œuvre de Jules Wouters), 2019 Photo Mélodie Lapostolle

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Adrien van Melle (From left to right) Téléphones, étagères, Adam, Gabriel et Jules, 2019 Chaise, 2019 STAAT / ÉTAT (œuvre de Jules Wouters), 2019 Photo Mélodie Lapostolle

observation of internal micro-events, rather than through a methodical, scientific and objective study of reality.

I very clearly started from a work of autofiction, which was a big part of my Beaux-Arts production, and slowly moved towards something more fictional. I feel like I’m still in this transition.

C.N. Why is there a need for the plural (Adam, Gabriel, Jules) if you start from questioning about yourself? Is this narrative multiplicity imposed by the choice of aesthetic or moral issues? Does it involve a process of defamiliarization in the heart of your work?

A.M. I started working on this fiction a few months or weeks after I graduated from Beaux-Arts in 2017. At that point, I say the idea was to stay in a form of autofiction and apply a kaleidoscopic effect that would allow me to go search in different places while keeping a narrative continuity, because I already had the idea of creating ​​ a long-term fiction, exploded in various artistic mediums.

Now I think it responds to the need to move away, not from me, because I can’t do it right now, but from my reality.

This is indeed what happened and if the main subject of the narratives remains a form of everyday life and an interest in the mundane, the characters are beginning to free themselves, to follow various trajectories.

C.N. Why the choice of different supports (the object, the written track, the photograph, the sound…)? Do you intend the conception of a work capable of mixing different intersemiotic universes through the mixing of writings and temporalities?

A.M. I believe that is already the case in some instances.

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Adrien van Melle Téléphones, étagères, Adam, Gabriel et Jules, 2019 Photo Mélodie Lapostolle

In Téléphones, étagères, Adam, Gabriel and Jules (2019) for example. It is an installation consisting of six metal shelves on which are arranged sixty mobile phones.

All are permanently lit up and each displays a different text, relating to the narrative sphere of one of the three characters. Sometimes it is a text in a fairly classic literary form, written in the simple past tense, in the third person, in prose, and at other times a word, an SMS that can be read on the Messages application on the smartphone. The stories get mixed up and it becomes difficult for the viewer to reference the “micro narrations”. Despite their formal uniformity, the nature of these phone objects varies, since some smartphones are truly display devices in terms of the type of text displayed and the way in which it is displayed, while others could be qualified as “fictional objects”, as if they had been extracted from the narrative universe, for example when they display text messages, a note written on a calendar, etc.

As for the choice of media, I am not sure that it is one.

I started, after high school, by studying cinema at the Sorbonne for four years, before moving on to photography at the Louis-Lumière School and finally, I entered the Beaux-Arts. I realized after a few experiences that cinema was not for me, too many constraints, too long production times, the obligation to work in groups. This is what made me go to photography, then to Fine Arts. Now, I use the mediums that I find most suitable for each project, each narration. I often have the fantasy of being a more formal artist, of being able to spend time producing more successful forms, working on a technique, but it’s really the opposite of my way of producing.

Adrien van Melle Reproduction du salon d’Adam Bordier, 2019 Photo Mélodie Lapostolle

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C.N. After having closely studied your practice, it seems to me that you use fiction as a tool to relate to reality? How would you qualify these spaces “between” (between fiction and reality) to which the spectators are led?

A.M. It seems to me that fiction allows a much finer and more accurate connection with reality, in terms of feelings and sensations. It’s a pretty personal and instinctive belief that I think is linked to my very subjective view of reality.

Which seems to me more in accordance with my way of feeling it after being passed through a filter. In this sense, I remember my first and powerful artistic emotions around eighteen when I discovered the cinema of Eric Rohmer and that of Wim Wenders. Alice dans les villes and Lisbonne Story are references for me that I keep in mind almost at the beginning of every project.

What is quite clear, however, is that the real is my work tool. I can’t imagine delving into a story where the setting, the details, are completely the fruit of my imagination. This also applies to the plastic part of my work. My drawings are almost exclusively working where I put myself in the position of a transcriber, I reproduce and redraw existing objects, sometimes photographs.

I like to play with the spectator, not to play with him, but to invite him to play. Suggest him to enter into an immersive and realistic narration while revealing to him, at the same time, that it is a construction. It is this mechanism that I use in several of my installations, in which I reproduce the life pieces of my characters.

C.N. During the installation of the produced stories, that means, during the staging of all these literary and extra-

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literary elements, how do you combine them to ensure that the literary spectrum is always the key element?

A.M. The narrative part is indeed, in my opinion, the major and endemic element in my work. However, it happens that I start the production of a new work, a new installation, with a formal desire, even if this is very quickly completed by a narrative project.

Today we are used to seeing the mediums specific to the visual arts mixing together. No one is surprised when a painter places his canvases in space in order to flirt with the idea of ​​the installation, or a photographer takes pictures of sculptures he has made that will not have another destiny than to be seen through his camera. On the other hand, the introduction of literature is at the same time rarer, more difficult, and effectively leaves behind a vestige, a wake, which one could qualify as spectral.

Obviously, I play from this statement, and I like the idea of​​ forcing the viewer to become a reader before they step back into the viewer role. Thus, I encourage moving away from a passive position to an active position, from public to private, from visible to intimate.

C.N. Do you think that the idea of ​​adding an audible device would add another dimension to the questioning of identity?

If so, which?

A.M. This is something that I have done many times. I produced a sound piece in 2017, a dialogue between two characters that seemed to me to require placing the viewer in a listening posture without giving them visual keys.

However, I am (perhaps for now) relatively reluctant to give a “soundtrack” to my installations or exhibitions. I think I like,

Adrien van Melle Reproduction du salon d’Adam Bordier, 2019 Photo Mélodie Lapostolle

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Adrien van Melle Reproduction de chambres de Jules Wouters, 2018 Photo Noémie Vidé, Le dix—10—dix

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Adrien van Melle Reproduction de la chambre de Gabriel Mayer, 2018 Photo Adrien van Melle

Adrien van Melle Reproduction de la chambre de Gabriel Mayer (detail), 2018 Photo Adrien van Melle

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Adrien van Melle Reproduction de la chambre de Gabriel Mayer (dĂŠtail), 2018

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as a viewer, that immersivity is offered to me but not imposed.

That it takes some effort. So that’s what I try to do in my work.

C.N. Self-objectification through autofiction finds its heritage in the wake of avant-garde experiences. A great example is André Breton’s novel Nadja (1928), where the “I” acquires multiple functions at the same time as it reveals an identity split.

What is your position in response to the identity issue of our time? What tools are you using to identify this point?

A.M. This is a difficult question. On this point, I operate very instinctively. I am more comfortable with the analysis of structures and situations than with that of individuals. In addition, I am a very reserved person and I admit being regularly uncomfortable and finding the emphasis on individual identity unreadable. I’m mainly referring here to social media and a form of self-promotion of one’s image.

The other major current identity issue seems to me to be the representation of minorities. Being a man and not belonging to a visible minority, I don’t feel like I have to fight a personal battle on this front. So, I have more of a position of interested and receptive spectator, because I believe that it is not (or no longer) the artist’s place to lead struggles for others.

By contrast, I think that we are confronted, I am speaking here of the society that I know, that is to say Western and predominantly Judeo-Christian, at a time of collapse (and perhaps of restructuring, I hope) values. It seems to me to be rather a good thing, whether it is on bourgeois or religious values ​​ or better still that of unbridled consumption. Still, we found ourselves helpless, aimless, maybe a little too focused on ourselves, lonely. This is what I believe that I’m trying to talk about in my stories.

C.N. What do you think about the fate (circulation, reception) of your writings?

A.M. In addition to my activity as an artist-author, I am also an editor and I take care of an artist-run-space. So, I have a fairly precise vision of how the small printing book industry works and how it is distributed. I have just finished an artist’s book, linked to my exhibition at the Jean-Jacques Henner Museum, which borders are on the novel and the exhibition

Adrien van Melle Reproduction du Salon de Gabriel Mayer, 2019

catalog, and whose publication is a collaboration between the museum and my publishing house. I know, for example, that if this book is sold in 300 copies it will be a real success.

Many of my writings are related to exhibitions or plastic works and, while they are accessible outside and after the time of the exhibition, I have no illusions about their scope in terms of circulation. I don’t care much about the broadcast right now, and I don’t think a lot about spreading after finishing a project, I’m usually anxious to tackle the next one quickly, excited for the novelty. Of course, that does not prevent me from having in the back of my mind the fantasy of publishing a novel with a publishing house with national scope, and a compendium of texts related to Adam, Gabriel and Jules.

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Adrien van Melle A casa di Pulcinella, 2020

Adrien van Melle (From left to right) Un Voyage, Instax, 2020 Darty, Toison d’or Dijon, 2020 Plan de la Villa Médicis, annoté par Camille C. , 2020

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Adrien van Melle À Saint-Priest-en-Jarez, devant le musée d’Art moderne et contemporain Saint-Étienne Métropole, 2020 Un Voyage, Instax, 2020

Adrien van Melle Un Voyage, roman Novel published by the National Museum JJ Henner editions and Extensible editions 188 pages

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THERE IS A FOG THAT BICYCLES LEAN ON INTERVIEW WITH GIULIA POPPI Ginevra Ludovici Giulia Poppi (b. 1992) is a visual artist based in Bologna. Her work, brazenly hot and material, is imbued with symbolic references that relate to intimacy and mystery. Poppi employs synthetic materials and artificial light to create a plurality of images. These images along with various objects and sketches of artefacts, are orchestrated in complex environments in order to generate bodily and tactile sensations. The physicality of the works often requires the viewer to reinterpret the character and the very experience of being in a given space which consequently triggers mechanisms of attraction and repulsion. In 2016, Poppi founded Malgrado, an art space in Bologna where she curated events along with two colleagues.

Her most important exhibitions include: P420, Bologna (2016, 2018), Mambo, Bologna (2017), Localedue, Torino (2017), Biennale dei Giovani, Monza (2017), Gelateria Sogni di Ghiaccio, Bologna (2019), CampoBase, Torino (2019), CarDrde, Bologna (2019), Manifattura Tabacchi, Firenze (2020), Museo Michetti, Francavilla (2020) and Pinacoteca Nazionale, Bologna (2020). In 2018, collaborating with Illy, Poppi designed the graphics for their coffee tin labels. In 2019, she won the ArtUp collectors prize (Bologna), she was artist in residence at Manifattura Tabacchi (Florence) and she is among the ten winners of AccadeMibact, exhibiting in Domani Qui Oggi, curated by Ilaria Gianni, the main collateral event of Art Quadriennal 2020 (Rome).

Ginevra Ludovici: How would you describe your artistic practice? Where does your research come from?

Giulia Poppi: My practice has to do with a close relationship between objects and their materiality. I am interested in seeing how we interact with what surrounds us and the materials represent an important filter for me, they are the point of contact that exists between our bodily being and the surrounding external to us. The suggestions that nourish my practice are among the most disparate: they often come from nature, where I happen to observe things that apparently seem more artificial than they actually are.

Right now, for example, I have an orchid in front of me, its structure would seem to be the result of a modern 3D computer graphics processing unit, its texture recalls latex or the typical textures of simulated materials with perfect colors and also acids whose reflections of light seem to be the result of a digital calculation, while instead it is all absolutely natural.

I like to play with materials, ranging between reality and sophistication to convey a certain underlying ambiguity.

My interest intends to investigate the paradoxes of the perception of reality, how much they are influencing and being influenced by the observer’s mental experience. The

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first real guinea pig in the game is somehow myself. To do this, it is necessary that the works and the observer have a complete sensory interaction, they must be able to be touched, heard and perceived with means beyond the visual; The essence of the works themselves is precisely contained in this aspect. The works invade the spaces, they impose themselves, they clutter, they invite contact, they open and close passages, they obscure and cloud the view, they generate noises, in short, they force us to deal with their presence. They disguise themselves with an illusory consistency where the movement of a drapery hides a glassy rigidity and the imposing mass of a wall conceals a soft fabric imbued with light behind its hostile features.

As a child I was convinced that the moquette in my room was responsible for the disappearance of my toys, sucking them up and dropping them on another floor, like a soft and viscous lava that swallowed them. With the same force with which we then believed that everything that could be real, today we avoid these “illusions” by considering them a sub-category of reality and granting them as a consolation prize some metaphorical or symbolic value passed through the censorship of reason. Instead, I like the idea of ​​keeping

Giulia Poppi Passagatto, 2020 Installation view at Domani, qui, oggi curated by Ilaria Gianni, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Roma Courtesy the artist Photo Paolo Darra

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this perceptual plasticity free, keeping multiple planes open at the same time. I think there is something mystical about the interaction with matter, the mind is left aside for a moment, it freezes, it cannot interpret, the separation is canceled, there is no time around a sensory stimulus, for a moment this absurd and childish vision that we insist on calling “objective reality� fails.

A practical example to better clarify this concept is the work Glassblock, exhibited at CAR DRDE gallery, which consists of a cold, hard, apparently immovable concrete glass wall. This is the image, the first thing you perceive.

Then when you approach the work, due to the shape of the space in which it is inserted, it is necessary to move this wall, which is suddenly yielding, imbued with light, pleasant to the touch, it evokes a pleasant, erotic experience.

At the same time, the wall carries with it references to Gothic architecture, somehow recalling a stained glass window in a cathedral that divides the shadow of the place of worship from the sunlight, only allowing the light to pass through a filter.

The wall is, therefore, intended as a pretext for a sensory experience that pushes us to change perspective.

G.L In recent years you have lived in Bologna, where you trained at the Academy of Fine Arts. How has your relationship with the city influenced your work?

G.P. Bologna is a city on a human scale, that I really appreciate and that facilitates relationships with other people. In recent years there have been many realities

Giulia Poppi Passagatto, 2020 Two cat flaps, automation, drywall Courtesy the artist Photo Paolo Darra

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that have coexisted in the Bolognese system, sustained by the work of institutions but also by the dense activity of project-spaces, such as Tripla, Localedue, Porto dell’Arte, Gelateria Sogni di Ghiaccio, which have been an important context of experimentation and growth for all of us, in GSG for example I had the opportunity to confront myself with my first solo show, Sbranksbunkdum. Among the various realities, collaborations of professional nature have been created spontaneously, based on informality, reciprocity and the desire for exchange and dialogue. The Academy was an important crossroads, from there I began to build many of the collaborations that accompany me to date.

G.L. In 2015, you spent an Erasmus period at the Akademie der Bildenden Kunst in Munich. What was it like dealing with the German educational system?

G.P. The experience in Munich was an important moment in my path and fundamental for my maturation. The Academy offers every possible technical means, that is, staff and laboratories with a high professional level to create any type of work. The work spaces, open 24 hours a day, were a considerable infrastructural support.

Furthermore, it was possible to freely range between various expressive languages and there was no clear division on the possibilities of experimentation.

G.L. You were one of the founders of the Malgrado spaceproject, which operated in Bologna in 2016-2017. Would you tell us more?

G.P. The project was born with Lucia Fontanelli whom I

Giulia Poppi Caravelle, 2020 Courtesy the artist

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met in Bologna for an exhibition with Cuoghi Corsello and with whom I then spent a period of residency at the Lac or Le Mon Foundation.

From this meeting was born the desire to share a studio that took shape in a space near vicolo Malgrado, hence the name. The intention was to have a simple workshop and only at a later time did the idea of ​​ starting a cycle of exhibitions tickle us, at that moment Dina Loudmer joined us.

Our format was quite simple: every Tuesday we had an impromptu inauguration. So the exhibition ended over the course of an evening.

There was no communication of the event, except through word of mouth and some flyers

the various languages, so we built a kind of basic scenography within which different things could happen thanks to the interaction with our audience who became an active participant. At the basis of the project there was the desire to collaborate and have fun. The whole process was based on trust and on a certain underlying permeability, so people were passing by Malgrado, everyone had their say and shuffled the cards in play, hybridizing the display we had set up. The exhibition environment therefore was every time reconfigured and reshaped and it was especially suitable for being inhabited.

A space in which to materialize somewhat crazy things that you might not have ventured

on Whatsapp with which we started the rumors.

We liked the idea of experimenting ​​ with a certain lightness following a sort of situationist logic.

In a short time the space became a meeting point, where each time we proposed different events, including exhibitions, performances and concerts. We often created hybrids between

in other contexts and spontaneously, due to the transience, the playful atmosphere, the tight programming, we found ourselves with an appointment that actually brought together a beautiful and heterogeneous community.

Then we got involved with Localedue during the NEXST festival. Localedue invited us to inhabit its

Giulia Poppi Fantavergini Senza Paura, 2020 Nylon, scenographic structure, artificial rose, plaster Photo Francesco Gnot

Giulia Poppi Fantavergini Senza Paura, 2020 Nylon, scenographic structure, artificial rose, plaster Photo Francesco Gnot

space during the Turin event and on that occasion we gave shape to MedusaMedusaMedusa.

Afterwards, Malgrado has been involved in the BBQ project during Bologna Artefiera for the realization of an exhibition event. The event took place in the house where I lived, in via Saragozza.

The exhibition, entitled Malgrado S2: E1, was divided into two floors which were connected by the external courtyard. The artists who participated in this project were Melania Fusco, Sacha Kanah and Lisa Dalfino, Lori Lako and Luca Savić.

G.L. Last year you were selected for the artist residency program at Manifattura Tabacchi. How did the experience unfold and how did it help redefine your practice?

G.P. The residency in Florence lasted six months.

The other participating artists and I had a studio, accommodation and in general the support system provided by Manifattura Tabacchi. There were six of us, all very different from each other, both in terms of training and in terms of research and languages, so the dialogue was very interesting.

Then, the experience at the Manifattura was the first circumstance in which I was able to structure a project by coordinating it with several voices, being followed by a staff of technicians. I also believe that the confrontation with Sergio Risaliti and Paolo Parisi, tutor of the residency program, was a very nice opportunity to try out a new fabric of relationships, collaborations and dialogues.

G. L. In Florence you finalized the work Fantavergini Senza Paura, can you tell us how the project has evolved?

G.P. In Florence we had large industrial spaces within the former tobacco factory that were still being restored, a construction site in these large rooms with very high ceilings and long corridors.

In this context I was making the resin castings that later became the first Caravelle - a series of works that I later exhibited in Francavilla in the context of the Michetti Award -, obviously dust and resins do not get along. To protect the work from dust I had traced a square perimeter with transparent greenhouse nylon sheets. The atmosphere and

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Giulia Poppi Fantavergini Senza Paura, 2020 Nylon, scenographic structure, artificial rose, concrete Courtesy the artist Photo Francesco Gnot

Giulia Poppi Fantavergini Senza Paura Installation view at La Meraviglia, curated by Sergio Risaliti Manifattura Tabacchi, Firenze Photo Leonardo Morfini

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the situation of the place had become surreal, as if to do it on purpose at that time words such as isolation, quarantine and curfew began to circulate. Once my Caravelle were finished, I had to return to Modena in a hurry with a quantity of photographic material from those rather strange days of work. The rest came a little by itself. The rose and the stump were part of an image that occupied my mind previously and that I was unable to conceptualise in a final piece. In the period that I spent at home, away from everything and with all these images that fluttered in my head, things have rearranged themselves. The image had become quite clear.

The mist envelops and flattens the object which becomes a perfect pretext. The frustrating inaccessibility leads to turning around these walls that offer a two-dimensional, almost cinematic image, which moves with the viewer and leads to explore its surface to understand its content in search of access. Natural and artificial lights merge, confusing their nature, the nylon cube carves out a portion of space, a solid of fog that removes the content from view and becomes a subject and image disturbance device.

At the center of the work, set in the casting of the concrete solid, there is an artificial rose. The object is, however, a pretext, the rose seemed perfect in this sense: it is a hyperabused element, for this reason it is loaded with symbols and references that are stratified passing from kitsch to a more spiritual dimension, it is the rose of the Harmony novels, a fairy-tale element as in Belinda and the Monster, a mystical object that refers to the Christian iconographic

Giulia Poppi From Dittico dei buchi (SplashSplappCiaff), 2020 White marble, light, spray paint Photo Studio Abruzzese Giulia Poppi Particular from Untitled (SplashSplappCiaff) Silicon, pigment, spray paint, light, steel, snap hooks Photo Studio Abruzzese Giulia Poppi Glassblock Exhibition view at RoomXY Curated by Massimo Bartolini at Cardrde, Bologna Photo Manuel Montesano

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Giulia Poppi From Dittico dei buchi (SplashSplappCiaff), 2020 Plastic, tongue shaped vibrator, light, iron, festoons Photo by Studio Abbruzzese

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Giulia Poppi SplashSplappCiaff Installation view at There’s a Monster Coming!

Curated by CampoBase, Torino Photo by Studio Abruzzese

tradition. I like that this ambiguity also returns in the title, Fantavergini Senza Paura, found in the pages of ABC, an Italian weekly from the 70s, a terrible stuff, a monstrous cross between Playboy and Cronaca Vera.

G.L. Currently your piece Passagatto is exhibited at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni, within the exhibition Domani Qui Oggi, which presents the work of ten emerging artists from the Academies of Fine Arts selected as part of the AccadeMibact Award. How did you relate to the exhibition space in the design and realization of a new work?

G.P. In Montemerano, a small town in Tuscany, there is a tempera on a wood altarpiece depicting a Madonna.

The painting appears to be in excellent condition, if not for a strange detail next to the virgin’s feet. A diligent and imaginative sacristan, probably not finding anything better, adapted the painting to a much more practical use than usual. The altarpiece, once cut into the shape of a door and placed at the entrance to the cellar of the church, seemed perfect, only one problem remained: how to allow the parish priest’s cat to pass through to facilitate his role as a mouse hunter; it is easy to say, sawing a cat flap at the foot of a sacred painting of the fifteenth century.

The cat flap is a transition element between inside and outside. It is usually placed on doors and has entered the common imagination as the protagonist of some of the cartoons that accompanied our childhood. The invention of the cat flap is attributed to Isaac Newton, who, between his tenure as president at the Royal Society of London and the development of the natural logarithm series for the calculation of pi, however, found the time to engineer this device.

Here we come to the cat flap proposed in an exhibition space such as that of the Palazzo delle Esposizioni, the tone remains facetious and recalls certain architectural distortions such as the cellar door of the Montemerano church, which are often seen only with the corner of the eye. Or like those paradoxical balconies with parapets but without doors to access them and those unfinished projects of freeways that end up in the middle of a plowed field.

I like to work in close relation with space, to be able to connote and transform it, even in a barely perceptible way, as in this case. My attention was focused on one of the thresholds of the exhibition space, it has four different entrances arranged in a cross along its perimeter. I decided to wall one of these entrances with a plasterboard wall in which I inserted the cat flap, the anomaly is quite delicate, you can only notice it by carefully observing the architecture of the space and its symmetry. The cat flap, which through automation makes the overhead door swing, generates the hypothesis of the presence of a cat, or rather the latter exists in the mind of the observer, clashing with the likelihood of the exhibition context. I liked the idea of dematerializing ​​ this cat, this spirit or ghost that roams the exhibition. A phantom work for a phantom audience, the exhibition is actually set up at the moment but is closed.

G.L. How has your work changed during the pandemic?

G.P. In spite of myself, I was able to see that it moved. I began to think that my sculptures could contain a before, an after and a during. Getting the right moment gives you great satisfaction.

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Giulia Poppi Untitled (pelli), 2017 Exhibition view at Percorsi Divaganti, P420, Bologna Curated by Davide Ferri

Giulia Poppi Untitled (Sbrankbunkdum), 2018 Plaster, reflective floor, spray paint, pigment, paraffin, ecographic gel, cockroaches

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Giulia Poppi Malgrado IV, 2017, exhibition view Malgrado Garagino, Bologna Courtesy the artist

Giulia Poppi Untitled (Carbonio e Silicio), 2018 Curated by Cuoghi Corsello Courtesy the artist

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Giulia Poppi Untitled (Carbonio e Silicio), 2018 Curated by Cuoghi Corsello Courtesy the artist

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