Camilla Boemio from Rome
Your new daily ritual…
I found balance in nature, the strength and ability to apply an ecological aesthetic that completely interacts with the dimension of "the natural sublime". I find the concept expressed by David Hockney in an interview a month ago so disruptive and obvious at the same time "remember they can't cancel spring" (1). So it was for me, a recovery of visceral contact with the natural elements.
My day starts early in the morning, it develops in the careful work in the garden, to take care of the flowers and plants in the park of the property. I dedicate part of the day to the art projects that I am integrating, and developing.
With which objects and spaces of your daily life are you interacting the most??
Having decided to move from the city to the countryside allows me to enjoy the most important gift I could receive, have a vegetable garden, a garden and a forest. Every day I compare myself with nature, in the most beautiful time of the year: spring (early summer now). When I'm at home, the study is the room where I spend the most time. Books are by far the objects with which I am interacting the most, to which are added the DVDs of films and video art.
Museums and galleries have reacted to the moment with digitalization and virtuality. What are your "strategies" for establishing new relationships?
Undoubtedly it was a particularly important moment for Italian museums to start a targeted use of digital. There are various virtuous cases among which: the Egyptian Museum of Turin, the GAMeC with the live streaming platform Radio GAMeC as well as Palazzo Corsini and the Galleria Corsini, a Roma, who have been using digital for a long time with conscious mastery.
If you think that Tate Modern published the digital strategy in 2013, and its goals have been set for the 2015; the "Italian case of museums" is not heartening.
The right mentality that an institution should have, so as to distribute its digital efforts, provides for accessibility, the interpretation, communication of the collections and research.
As well as providing valuable content to existing and new audiences, it should create and nurture a community involved in the arts.
My strategy is channeled into previously developed contacts. We have just completed a project with Arts Council England e, through the contacts developed, we are trying to intensify the projects in the coming months.
When all this is over: one thing to do and one never to do again.
If we want to learn from the collapse resulting from the pandemic, and related causes, the "rules" of contemporary art should be rewritten starting from the desire to support a gradual affirmation of the system towards an intensification of the sense of ethics, solidarity, collaboration in support of choral and research artistic projects. Perhaps a new era will be possible, it also depends on us.
New places and alternative spaces of cohesion have been born around you? (we think of the courtyards of the palaces, to the terraces etc…).
Offer multifaceted points of view, guidelines that can connect with other realities, that create hybridizations. At this time more than bring potential examples, I take the liberty of listing in the articles, that I am writing, those projects that start "from the bottom" that extend into public places in the city, attracting attention and shaking souls.
Somehow I feel that this formula belongs to an experimental experience, made up of several items, from multiple collaborations in which an action took shape in a pivotal moment for the discussion on climate and civil responsibility, but also the ability of art to re-activate the social fabric by not waiting for that support from public institutions so desired in Italy.
I cured, con AAC Platform, three pop-up exhibitions of the project Purple Window Gallery, with photographer David Stewart and artists Maria Elisa D'Andrea and Sean Gall. This choral project was born in Chicago to spread to other communities of artists: from Australia to England, a Roma.
I have also closely followed other art projects that have activated a real sense of community; especially way Artists in Quarantine born from the interaction of the international confederation of museums: the Reina Sofía in Madrid, il Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, SALT online, the Warsaw and Antwerp Museums of Modern Art, MACBA Contemporary Art Museum of Barcelona, M HKA with the Internazionale; whose collaboration is based on dialogue and the sharing of visions and research.
In these two ethical projects the balconies and windows have become an appendage of thought, a way to counter loneliness, anxiety and to grab concepts of solidarity, influencing urban integration experiments in which to go beyond the usual way in which to propose art.
(1) Tratto dall’articolo del The New York Times “Artists Are Hunkered Down, but Still Nurturing Their Inner Visions” scritto da By Ted Loos, published on 21 April, 2020.
Stretcher Boemio she is an art writer, research curator and theorist whose practice investigates contemporary aesthetics. Look at the role political activism plays, and forms of socialization influenced by the media and the moving image; is associated with AICA (International Art Critics). Recent curatorial projects include the exhibition Jerome Chazeix: The coat of hipness (sheer materials) made in the Altaroma2020 calendar, and Label201 in Rome (2020); the project developed with the Arts Council England with the artist Marina Moreno (2019-2020), the exhibition of Marc Trujillo: Fast da AOCF58 – Gallery Bruno Lisi, a Roma (2020) and with AAC Platform he curated pop-up exhibitions for the Purple Window Gallery project (Chicago).
An essay by him can be found in the ROAR publication published by the Cambridge School of Art, which explores how artistic and aesthetic strategies address the concepts of sustainability; and its recent volume As Brilliant As the Sun published by Vanillaedizioni reconstructs a journey through the artistic practices of California and around the city of Rome, creating a link between two art places united by analogies and contradictions. http://www.camillaboemio.com/associazione.html