“The breath of art”: the pandemic told through masks

The mask is the protagonist of IL REPIRO DELL’ARTE, an exhibition conceived by Virginia Monteverde, in full lockdown, which curates the various editions, the first at Palazzo Ducale in Genoa last September and the next ones scheduled for 2021 in Switzerland, Netherlands and Germany

This subject,which  will remain in the collective memory as a worldwide identifier of the pandemic we are going through – hoping that it will soon become a memory for posterity – is the inspiration for the approximately forty works that as many artists from different countries have worked on responding to the curator’s call and by using the materials available in the cramped environment in which they could operate during the acute phase of restrictions. The result is an eclectic exhibition in which each artist has interpreted the symbolic image of this emergency, the mask, giving us the reflections matured in the difficulties of this period.  In the heterogeneity and originality of the materials used – by necessity, sometimes, more than by choice – we find fabrics and metals, ceramics, pantyhose but also bricks, books or waste materials – pieces of an old mink fur, for example. And equally many and different are the possible interpretations of these works which at times stand as champions of the fight against the virus, others underline human frailty in the face of catastrophic and unexpected events or, again, hope for a new post-pandemic era, a better world. of the one we left behind. Although all inspired by the same object, these works are the expression of different sensitivity, artistic figures, contents, paths and backgrounds.

The works were created by Emiliano Alfonsi, Maria Rebecca Ballestra, Connie Bellantonio, Mariella Bettineschi, Stefano Bigazzi, Andreas Burger, Tiziana Cera Rosco, Marcela Cernadas, Isabel Counselor, Carla Crosio, Pier Giorgio De Pinto, Loredana Galante, Armida Gandini, Mauro Ghiglione, Gianluca Groppi, Sophie Hjerl, Carla Iacono, Fukushi Ito, Leslie Johnson, Friederike Just, Federica Marangoni, Florencia Martinez, Luisa Mazza, Viviana Milan, Maurizio Nazzaretto, Giuseppe Negro, Nikos Moschos, Anna Oberto, Angelo Pretolani, Paola Rando, Silvano Repetto , Fried Rosenstock, Roberto Rossini, Marco Rotelli, Alexander Schabracq, Nina Staehli, Tadzia and Jean Sadao, Nano Valdes, Anne-Claire van del Elshout.

The Genoa stage was enriched by the Dance sections – curated by Davide Francesca and Francesca Pedullà – and Poetry, curated by Claudio Pozzani, director of the Genoa International Poetry Festival.