ZOÈ GRUNI – Fromoso

Until May 26
AOCF58 – BRUNO LISI Gallery
via Flaminia 58 – Roma
Curated by Camilla Boemio

AOC F58-Galleria Bruno Lisi promotes Fromoso the solo exhibition of multimedia artist Zoè Gruni, curated by Camilla Boemio.
Gruni is one of the most representative artists of her generation, consistent to the point of being radical, she has always explored unfiltered issues of gender, identity, diaspora, forced colonization in Brazil, indigenous history, and the feminist cause using her own body and dialoguing chorally with other performers, writers, and filmmakers in making works in communion to address ‘exposed nerves’ that have allowed her to arrive at the state of grace, the creator of global works of contemporary art.In this catharsis the ramified symbols take shape, identity as an inquiry, as a political aesthetic bulwark in which reminiscences of Peter Gorsen’s Obscene Dimension extend; the ideological content of moral rebellion as an anti-capitalist vision, as a return to Rousseau’s “noble savage”, an application of the revolutionary sense of “obscene” assaults on constituted morality.

The exhibition is articulated and takes shape around the video installation ‘Fromoso’. The latter (Rio de Janiero, Brazil 2019-2020) is a video performance inspired by the concept of anthropophagy. The action was made in a carnival float dump in the port area of Rio de Janeiro. The body of Cuban dancer Ana Kavalis indulges in an esoteric ritual in which she is absorbed until she disappears.
The works in the exhibition incorporate and start from the site-specific installation composed of textiles surrounding the video installation, to “Fromoso” (2020) photographic print on forex, “Fromoso” (2020) which is composed of six elements made in photographic print on forex, and “Fromoso I”; “Fromoso II”; “Formoso III”; “Fromoso VI,” (2020) a series of four linocut etchings on paper.

The works in the exhibition incorporate and start from the site-specific installation composed of textiles surrounding the video installation, to “Fromoso” (2020) photographic print on forex, “Fromoso” (2020) which is composed of six elements made in photographic print on forex, and “Fromoso I”; “Fromoso II”; “Formoso III”; “Fromoso VI,” (2020) a series of four linocut etchings on paper.

According to Boemio: “Zoè Gruni draws on the visual tradition of the Second Renaissance evoked by Eugenio Battisti in his ‘L’Antirinascimento’, as well as on anthropological kaleidoscopic modes of art in which the archaic power of historical legacy dialogues with the more rigorous language of contemporary art. She describes the human body as a porous instrument of pleasure, a fiery maze of transformism, fluid, independent, irreverent, in which ancestral terror hovers with stages of asceticism. Her penchant for dexterity and masterful use of materials forge the sculpture that becomes a wearable armour (a second skin) that connects to the figurative and funk movements of the Bay Area, a place where she has lived for a long time but from which she expands pagan, Creole and indigenous legacies. The body is the final frontier, the uncomfortable subject in which transformations take place. The concept of the body as frontier is treated from a wide range of different angles: formal, aesthetic, existential and political in which it is exorcised, venerated, mystified while remaining the absolute protagonist. This art exhibition (following the February talk held at the Pistoia Musei) is also in motion, like the steps of the Cuban performer featured in Fromoso. She moves from one state to another, becoming something else, exploring multiple identities, leading to her asceticism.”

The artist’s book Segunda pele published by Metilene (2023), developed during the artist’s experience in Brazil, stems from the need to exorcise the fear of diversity. In this research, the body becomes the catalytic element capable of relating to others, representing the main filter between the human being and the world. The book can also be consulted, and purchased, in the bookshop at Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome.

Bio:

Zoè Gruni (Pistoia, 1982) has lived and worked extensively in Los Angeles, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. A graduate of the Art Institute of Pistoia, she graduated in painting from the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence. She then moved to California and then to Brazil where she was able to deepen her artistic research on body languages in relation to local social and cultural contexts. She has collaborated with various research institutions such as CCC Strozzina (Centro Cultura Contemporanea Palazzo Strozzi) in Florence, the San Francisco Art Institute in California, FAAP University (Fundação Armando Alvares Penteado) in São Paulo, and EAV Parque Lage in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Her work is represented in Italy by Galleria Il Ponte (Florence), exhibiting at many international contemporary art fairs, including Artissima.
Camilla Boemio is a research curator, and art writer; she is associated with AICA (International Art Critics) and IKT (International). Her work focuses on interdisciplinary systems from an intersectional feminist perspective, with a focus on social systems and other ecologies. Her recent curatorial projects investigating the body include: Zoé Gruni:  Corpo come frontiera ‘900  talk at Palazzo de’ Rossi, Pistoia Musei (2023);Jérôme Chazeix:  The coat of hipness (materiali velati) exhibition curated for AltaRoma2020 by Label201 (2020); Marina Moreno: Dance as sculpture in space supported by Arts Council England (2019-2020). In 2022 she was associate curator of Pera + Flora + Fauna: The Story of Indigenousness and the Ownership of History, at the 59th International Art Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia, Il Latte dei Sogni. In 2018; she took part in the VVM project at Tate Liverpool.