Exhibition by RUFA students from the two-year program in Multimedia Arts and Design. Artists: Blivet, Raffaele Esposito and Annarita Debellis, Silvia Baldo, Giuseppe Di Capua, Elisa Catalano. Curated by Re:humanism.
From September 16 to 30, 2024 – AlbumArte – via Flaminia, 122 00196 Rome. Free admission.
Medianature is a project by first and second-year students of the RUFA two-year program in Multimedia Arts and Design, curated by Re:humanism and hosted by AlbumArte, an independent art research and production center in Rome. The title of the exhibition is inspired by the work of media theorist Jussi Parikka, who uses this term to propose a new way of understanding the relationship between nature and culture. Parikka explores how media are not just tools for representing nature but are themselves participants in the global ecology, shaping and influencing our relationship with the environment.
Invisible Pavilion, conceived by the Blivet collective, ironically alludes to the exhibition setup proposed by one of the leading contemporary art institutions, the Venice Biennale, but reverses its focus on visibility, prompting us to reflect on who and what is truly exposed in today’s hyper-connected society. A guided tour invites the viewer to traverse the spaces of AlbumArte, revealing the underlying logic only at the end and encouraging a rebellious act against imposed rules.
Cyborg Mama Nature is a large totemic installation conceived by Silvia Baldo, Giuseppe Di Capua, Elisa Catalano that merges nature and technology and directly interacts with the viewer, stimulating a symbiotic relationship between human, organic, and inorganic components through sound. The work, designed for the main hall of the exhibition space, reacts to visitors’ movements and returns sounds with the aim of creating an interspecies dialogue. With a clear reference to the monolith from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, a symbol of human progress and domination through technology, this piece is reinterpreted in a contemporary key: the totemic structure, no longer an emblem of dominance, becomes a representation of an inclusive, cohabiting, and participatory perspective, where all entities live and communicate in harmony.
Finally, Queer Ecosystem by Raffaele Esposito and Annarita Debellis consists of a series of kinetic installations that produce a primordial storm that stuns, reveals, and “fluidifies” the viewer’s identities. The work represents the bark of a tree made entirely of metal. The bark, in its deepest essence, is not an impenetrable barrier but rather a filter that mediates between the inner being and the surrounding world. Through its roughness and cracks, it expresses the memory of past experiences and cycles of life that repeat endlessly. Here, the bark becomes a symbol of contact and exchange, of openness to transformation. The seemingly cold and artificial space reveals itself as a place of rebirth and adaptation, suggesting that technology can become a natural extension of our ecosystem: a living skin where bonds of care are established based on the awareness of inextricable interconnections.
INFORMATION SHEET
Title: Medianature
Artists: Blivet; Raffaele Esposito and Annarita Debellis; Silvia Baldo, Giuseppe Di Capua, Elisa Catalano
Curated by: Re
Opening: Monday, September 16, 6:00 PM Open: Tuesday to Friday and Saturday by appointment, from 3:00 PM to 7:00 PM
Free admission