The time of Discretion. Chapter one di Lisa Batacchi, curated by Veronica Caciolli closes the cycle GLOBAL IDENTITIES. Postcolonial and cross-cultural Narratives curated by Valentina Gensini. The Time of Discretion is presented as a metaphorical and necessary retrospective on a cycle of works developed specifically on the subject of discretion and intended as its first chapter, over the last two years. The show consists of two works made in the south of China together with the Hmong people and about twenty new works expressly produced for this occasion, including installations, tapestries, videos, photographs, documentary archives and symbolic finds. The Time of Discretion is a transnational project in progress, which opens up complex and extremely sensitive issues that widely extend the boundaries of art. The exhibition intersects experience and representation, dramatically confronting the East and the West, advancing a dense theoretical scenario in relation to the processes of globalization. The project begins with the participation of Lisa Batacchi at the Land Art Mongolia Biennal of 2016, whose theme to be discussed concerned the interpretation of the axis that divides the sky from the earth. To do so, the artist reached Guizhou, a mountain village in southern China where the ancient Hmong people (originating from the Siberian-Mongol area), observe a traditional ritual daily. In particular, they hold a specific practice, considered divinatory, that of natural indigo dyeing. A large tent created by the artist, manually, slowly and discretely, together with the Hmong women, was later carried in a procession towards the sacred mountain Altan Ovoo, for the inaugural performance of the Biennale. The horse-cow represented there, shows a symbology derived from a Chinese oracle of the classical tradition, questioned preliminarily by the artist, whose sentences are governed by a logic of randomness, through the repeated tossing of coins. A randomness clearly understood as not accidental but secretly determined, also deliberately regulates the progressive behavior of Lisa Batacchi. A subsequent experience with this people allowed her to dye another fabric, which still draws on the meanings expressed in the fortieth and in the second hexagram of the I-Ching (The liberation – The receptive). Alongside these, there are further twenty multimedia works, produced for this exhibition and shown in preview for the Le Murate space. The collaboration with different types of mastery, activity that characterizes one of the directions of the project, has been extended by the artist to the local area, first in the city of Florence, where through the ancient looms of the Lisio Foundation, she has been able to realize five fabric tapestries. A toli, an amulet usually worn and used by Mongolian shamans, has instead been reproduced on a large scale, for performative as well as exhibition purposes, in parternship with the la Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna di Pisa. A new batik dyed with guado (ancient vegetable color) will be realized during the summer together with Natural Color Culture in the Marche region and premiered at Le Murate on September the 4th. The exhibition is also enriched by four photographic series that on one hand document the performance for the Land Art Mongolia Biennal, the backstage material of this first chapter and a collection that represents the beauty, the persistence of tradition and the fragility of a world partially isolated, on the threshold of globalization but still magically possible. Eventually, a video, which anticipates an upcoming feature film, retraces the landscape, relational and cultural stages of Mongolia, Inner Mongolia and southern China, in which poetry, imagery and narration become confused. June 7th h 5.30 p.m. introduction to exhibition by Veronica Caciolli curator, Valentina Gensini artistic director Le murate. Progetti Arte Contemporanea and the artist Lisa Batacchi h 6.30 p.m. vernissage

In particular, they hold a specific practice, considered divinatory, that of natural indigo dyeing. A large tent created by the artist, manually, slowly and discretely, together with the Hmong women, was later carried in a procession towards the sacred mountain Altan Ovoo, for the inaugural performance of the Biennale.
The horse-cow represented there, shows a symbology derived from a Chinese oracle of the classical tradition, questioned preliminarily by the artist, whose sentences are governed by a logic of randomness, through the repeated tossing of coins. A randomness clearly understood as not accidental but secretly determined, also deliberately regulates the progressive behavior of Lisa Batacchi.
A subsequent experience with this people allowed her to dye another fabric, which still draws on the meanings expressed in the fortieth and in the second hexagram of the I-Ching (The liberation – The receptive).
Alongside these, there are further twenty multimedia works, produced for this exhibition and shown in preview for the Le Murate space.

The collaboration with different types of mastery, activity that characterizes one of the directions of the project, has been extended by the artist to the local area, first in the city of Florence, where through the ancient looms of the Lisio Foundation, she has been able to realize five fabric tapestries.
A toli, an amulet usually worn and used by Mongolian shamans, has instead been reproduced on a large scale, for performative as well as exhibition purposes, in parternship with the la Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna di Pisa.
A new batik dyed with guado (ancient vegetable color) will be realized during the summer together with Natural Color Culture in the Marche region and premiered at Le Murate on September the 4th.

The exhibition is also enriched by four photographic series that on one hand document the performance for the Land Art Mongolia Biennal, the backstage material of this first chapter and a collection that represents the beauty, the persistence of tradition and the fragility of a world partially isolated, on the threshold of globalization but still magically possible.
Eventually, a video, which anticipates an upcoming feature film, retraces the landscape, relational and cultural stages of Mongolia, Inner Mongolia and southern China, in which poetry, imagery and narration become confused.

Il progetto nell’ambito di ToscanaInContemporanea 2018

“Points of view from different continents of the globe tell of the dynamics of identity in contexts that have struggled historically to find a pattern in which a land and a community can recognize themselves, to identify a codex marked by collective memory and common historical, sociological, and even psychological features. Today, this search for signs of belonging represents an experience of unprecedented urgency, taking place in an international landscape laden with appropriations, cultural influences, and hybridization that are spontaneous and not necessarily sought after, and that are perhaps due to commercial opportunism or to the unstable, fluid reality of the digital world.”—Valentina Gensini Is it still possible to speak about identity in a strongly globalized context, marked by uprooting, mobility and migration? The re-emergence of nationalism reveals a new urgency concerning the sense of belonging that contradicts existing cultural hybridization. The international seminar and exhibition cycle, held at Le Murate. Progetti Arte Contemporanea in Florence in 2018, aimed to provide insights, analysis and reflections about global identity dynamics, with particular attention to cultural production, the hybridization of languages and postcolonial narratives. The publication is a collection of the essays and lectures by the speakers who took part in this crucial artistic and cultural event.

https://www.moussepublishing.com/?product=/global-identities/

The Impossible Black Tulip, third episode of the GLOBAL IDENTITIES Postcolonial and cross-cultural Narrative cycle, is a project that finds its reason in the exploration of the concept of belonging. The exhibition is named after the earliest known Chinese world map that unites western and eastern cartographic views and style. Maps and identities have a deep connection: As a crucial visualization of national borders, mapping has been linked to the political construction of national identity. However this map, symbol of cultural hybridity, confuses our concept of identity and, along with its rarity and exoticism, it was called the Impossible Black Tulip. Through this exhibition and participatory actions, this event wants to contribute to the post-colonial debates on hybridity, decolonization and fluid identity. In this reagard Macau represents an unique case-study: a Portuguese colony for 400 years, after the return to China in 1999 as a special administrative region (SAR) , identity making in Macao has been a process of incorporating instead of repressing or eliminating the identities of “the other”. How is the concept of hybridity related to belonging? Together with the local Chinese community (one of the biggest communities in the EU) and three artists from Macau, Eric FOK, Gue Jie CAI, and  Ka Long WONG we will investigate the different ways we can reflect on these concepts. We will inquire as to the legitimacy of basing an identity on only certain specific aspects of local colonial history, the relationship between belonging and ownership, and finally, the relationship between the memory of an area and the “modern” capitalist appropriation of the landscape. The various anti-migratory events and the increasing success of souverainiste parties have brought to light an urgent need to analyse the historical racialised constructions of identity in order to foster contemporary debate on a more fluid concept of identity. How can we define an “identity” today?

Artistic Direction: Valentina Gensini Curating: Livia Dubon Organization: Mus.e, Le Murate. Progetti Arte Contemporanea Coordinator: Sandy Chan Interpretation Panels: Veronica Gabriele e Livia Dubon Graphic Design: Athos de Martino Sponsor: Instituto Cultural do Governo da R.A.E. de Macau (I.C.M.), the Institute Confucio Florence, Macau Visual Students Art Zone Supporters: the Camões Institute of Lisbon, the Department of Languages, Literatures and Studies Interculturali of the University of Florence and the “Fernando Pessoa” Chair Contributions: Association Chì-na, Dragon Film Festival, Permanent workshop for the Peace – District 5, Florence.

By Maria Nissan and Victoria DeBlassie curated by Daria Filardo There are myriad ways of tackling global issues, complicated balances, and politics that involve different areas of the world, and one of these is a physical and conceptual reflection on coffee. Coffee—a drink native to Ethiopia and spread over hundreds of years across many different parts of the planet— transnationalally combines different cultures and can just as well be symbol of a relaxed and shared moment of bonding as an element that underlines exploitation and extremely controversial global trade policies. It’s along this line that the presented work of Maria Nissan and Victoria DeBlassie operates, two young artists who have been collaborating on this theme for months. The intervention they’ve proposed for the Murate space takes ‘Interpretation of a Seed’ as its title and it is the result of questions that the artists have been asking themselves as well as of a common practice that began with the collection of coffee grounds used both in the moka machine as well as in American drip coffee that have become the raw material that once mixed with salt and flour and baked in the oven have given rise to sculptural objects. The artists have also collected the burlap sacks in which the coffee seeds themselves are transported and have been transformed into installational elements in the space. These elements, each used differently by each artist, are the common ground of a formal thought developed throughout the exhibition space. ‘Interpretation of a Seed’ takes form in two rooms on the ground floor of the Murate exhibition space, two similar but different places. One space—Maria Nissan’s—is activated by more sensorial and material characteristics with the presence of organic elements like sugar, the coffee sculptures, and the burlap sacks as chairs that invite a moment of relaxation and sharing, coffee culture viewed as an associative experience. The elements of the installation allude to the Middle Eastern culture of the artist (of Iraqi origins), to American culture, mixed with the Italian aspect where the presence of coffee is an obvious and cultural element of identity. The other room, created by Victoria DeBlassie, despite having the same elements in common with the first room, is more reminiscent of a certain type of ‘indie’ coffee house (apparently more respectful of the production processes but often in reality managed by multinationals like Starbucks), which is the case for Ethiocha Koffiehius, the name that the artist thought of for her space. Here the material elements converge in an action of conceptual protest. Elements and dates are collected on the chalkboards that underline the most complicated aspects of global trade, and affixed to the walls are images and posters that seem to allude to slogans used to capture consumers but that play with the ambiguity of the proposed messages that shifts the attention onto the hidden aspects and manipulated information. The double installation envelops the visitor both from a sensorial, material, and olfactory point of view as well as a space for thought and coming together. Starting from coffee, the two artists have spanned history and diverse geographies, reactivating our awareness of cultural, historical, and political realities, and all this just from the simple and ordinary gesture of having a coffee.

Arnas Anskaitis, Ignas Krunglevičius, Andrej Polukord, Ieva Rojūtė curated by Matteo Innocenti in collaboration with Adrius Pocius, Alesia and Yuliya Savitskaya As Second episode of The GLOBAL IDENTITIES cicle, A certain identity is a project that brings together artists of different nationalities to express themselves about identity issues. The first exhibition of the project, presents the young Lithuanian artists Arnas Anskaitis, Ignas Krunglevičius, Andrej Polukord, Ieva Rojūtė. The certain , as an integral part of the title, in Italian “certa”, takes on a double meaning: as an adjective it is synonymous with certainty, the identity which we can undoubtedly recognize, as an alternative it is also an indefinite adjective, without quality or quantity, indicating an identity that is possible among many others. Four artists of a particular nationality are chosen by the curator of the project in collaboration with the museums or the Fine Arts Academy of the respective countries to “represent”, according to the particular inclination of their research and culture of origin, the factor of identity through such exhibition. The history and geographic location of Lithuania makes it significant both for the question of identity and for that of the borders and relations within the continent. Since the Republic of Lithuania, like the other Baltic countries, has built itself in a dual movement of independence and annexation, between Russia and Europe – where is been a member since 2004 -. 2018 also marks the centenary of the nation’s independence, which took place in February 1918 and The constitution of the Republic. Vernissage e artists talk: 5 aprile ore 17.30. With the collaboration of Le Murate. Progetti Arte Contemporanea – Mus.e and with TUM associazione culturale (Italia/Italy), Fondazione per lo sviluppo della cultura dell’istruzione della persona (Bielorussia/Belarus), Vilnius Pataphysic Institute (Lituania/Lithuania). Con il patrocinio dell’Ambasciata della Repubblica di Lituana nella Repubblica Italiana e del Consolato della Repubblica Lituana di Firenze.

Nell’ambito di un semestre dedicato alla tematica del post coloniale Murate Art District  ha prodotto una mostra inedita dal titolo Il viaggio immaginario di Barthélémy Toguo a cura di Janine Gaelle Dieudji e Justin Randolph Thompson, realizzata in collaborazione con Black History Month Florence e Institut Francais Italia.

Il progetto monografico racconta l’attitudine politica dell’artista, che interpreterà un Paese dalla forte volontà di riscatto: l’Africa di Toguo è un’Africa che rifiuta la ghettizzazione dei suoi artisti nel mercato dell’arte globale, e che altresì rifiuta di accettare una lettura coloniale della propria terra: “L’Africa non è una discarica!” gridano opere come Dustbin presentata per la prima volta in Italia.