LUDOVICA CARBOTTA · inerte, qué es sujeto y qué objeto. Recuerda esas islas misteriosas que al...

LUDOVICA CARBOTTA

portfolio- selected projects

[email protected]

My practice focuses on the physical exploration of the urban space and on how individuals establish connections with the environment they inhabit. Hovering on the boundaries between reality and fiction, recent works combine installations, texts and performances reflecting around the notion of site, identity and participation. Specifically I am exploring what I call fictional site specificity, a form of site-oriented practice that considers imaginary places or embodies real places with fictional contexts, recovering the role of imagination as a value to construct our knowledge.With imagination we can actually create a place to belong, but this will be inevitably affected by the reality of the language that constitutes it as an object. By combining installations, texts and performances, I produce body of works that take the form of medium-scale environments.

Faustine

Pipistrello, Baix Empordà - Catalunya September 7, 2019

coordinated by Xavier Ristol, David Bestué and Enric Farrés Duran

photo: Roberto Ruizvoice: Eulàlia Rovira

performer: Rasmus Nilausen, Ludovica Carbotta

https://pipistrello.hotglue.me/?2019_Ludovica%20Carbotta/

LUDOVICA CARBOTTA

[email protected]://www.ludovicacarbotta.com/

El trabajo de Ludovica Carbotta (Turín, 1982) se centra en la exploración física del espa-cio mediante la superposición en él de trazas de realidad y ficción, una superposición o mezcla que sacude nuestra experiencia al acceder a su obra. En esta ocasión nos invita a conocer a Faustine, inspirada en un personaje extraído de La invención de Morel, una novela escrita el año 1940 por Aldolfo Bioy Casares. Una de las escenas recurrentes del relato es la visita que hace un fugitivo a un acantilado para espiar a una mujer que obser-va el atardecer cada día, Faustine. Ludovica extrae del texto esta situación y la traslada al interior de la cueva, haciéndonos partícipes del momento en el que el fugitivo se dirige por fin a ella, a través de un monólogo que combina fragmentos del relato original con otros escritos para la ocasión. En la cueva el cuerpo de Faustine se diluye con la oscu-ridad y las rocas sobre las que se apoya, de hecho no sabemos qué está vivo y qué es inerte, qué es sujeto y qué objeto. Recuerda esas islas misteriosas que al acercarnos a ellas descubrimos que en realidad son el lomo de un monstruo marino. Por otro lado, la relación un tanto frustrante entre las demandas amorosas del fugitivo y la indiferencia de Faustine parece remitirnos al de la propia escultora con su obra. Son muchos los mitos que nos refieren a los intentos en el ámbito de la escultura por modelar una figura tan perfecta que llegue a adquirir vida propia, y ese parece haber sido el intento de Carbotta. Ha construido a Faustine, la ha trasladado cuidadosamente de su taller al interior de una cueva, y ha redactado un texto que, como un encantamiento, debería otorgarle un alien-to de vida. Esta declaración de amor, de la que somos testigos, no obtiene respuesta.Las obras recientes de Ludovica Carbotta combinan instalaciones, textos y representa-ciones que juegan con las nociones de lugar, identidad y participación. La artista enfoca su atención especialmente en lo que ella llama especificidad de sitio ficticio, una forma de práctica orientada a lo que considera lugares imaginarios o combinación de lugares reales con contextos ficticios, recuperando el papel de la imaginación como valor para construir nuestro conocimiento. Carbotta ha estado trabajando en los últimos años en un proyecto de largo plazo llamado Monowe, una ciudad imaginaria donde solo vive una persona. Se trata de un no lugar, al menos en el sentido físico, pero sin embargo presente en el tiempo porque aparece y desaparece. Una ciudad diseñada para que habite una única persona, aislada de cualquier contacto con el mundo. Tras visitar a Faustine, nos queda la duda de si se trata del único habitante de Monowe o si podría pertenecer a una cueva, una isla o al mar. El sentido último de lo estatutario.Faustine de Ludovica Carbotta ha sido organizado por Pipistrello, un proyecto artístico que se desarrolla en espacios no habituales, en esta ocasión en una cueva acuática lla-mada cova d’en Gispert.

https://pipistrello.hotglue.me/?2019_Ludovica%20Carbotta/

Faustine, 2019.Installation view / Islas Formigues Palamos, Baix Empordà - Catalunya

Faustine, 2019, polystirene, putty resin, rope, wood, sponge.Islas Formigues Palamos, Baix Empordà - Catalunya

Faustine, 2019.Performance / Islas Formigues Palamos, Baix Empordà - Catalunya

Faustine, 2019.Installation view and performance / Islas Formigues Palamos, Baix Empordà - Catalunya

Faustine, 2019.Performance / Islas Formigues Palamos, Baix Empordà - Catalunya

Monowe, 2016-ongoing

In the last three years, I have worked on the project titled Monowe: an imagina-ry city, designed for one person only that manifests itself with different elements (such as infrastructures, architecture portions, textual documents, etc.) poised between a ruin and an open construction site. It replicates the current urban individualistic way of life, radicalizing it to the dimension of one single person. Its shape is always different as the artist presents only a fragment of the whole each time. Somehow Monowe brings the mechanism of a gated community to an extreme level: it is a place so exclusive that it becomes a sort of prison in which the only citizen decides to live spontaneously.Key element in the project is a lone inhabitant of the city -sometimes physically appearing in the space, sometimes just leaving behind small traces- who despe-rately tries to regain possession of both the objects and the space. The character’s behavior seems compulsive, when moving and changing the order of things intuitively, devoid of a consistent line of reasoning. This incessant and frenzied activity has a rather clear goal: far from any human contact and social constrains, the inhabitant alters the reality of things and deform it according to personal preferences, insights and taste in a spasmod- ic process of self-affirmation.The project Monowe is influenced by the theories of philosopher Peter Pal Pelbart that reflects on forms of isolation as a state from which to abandon social norms, rules and logics that have been taken for granted in society. Although the notion of isolation is usually considered as a negative concept, I am interested in the potentiality of isolation as a circumstance from which to conduct actions of self awareness and to operate processes of self-affirmation, aiming to overcome prescribed social norms. According to Pelbart, fighting off the exhaustion of our contemporary age of connective excess is possible, embracing examples of pos-itive solitude. (Peter Pal Pelbart, Cartography of Exhaustion Nihilism Inside Out, 2015, Univocal Publishing, MN)

Ludovica Carbotta Monowe

Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, TurinApril 15 – September 29, 2019Curated by Irene Calderoni

photo: Gianni Ferrero Merlino e Giorgio Perottino

Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo presents the solo exhibition of Ludovica Carbotta (Turin, 1982). The exhibition centers on her ongoing project Monowe, underway since 2016, in which the artist has conceived and constructed an ideal city: an urban model created for a single individual. Through a plurality of expressive means, sculpture, installation, documents, sound works and performative actions, Carbotta gives shape to an evolving organism. Here, fiction and reality coexist in a dialectic relationship. Informed by various sources of inspiration, utopian and science-fiction literature, architectural theories, and sociological analysis, this project results in a sophisticated reflection on the contemporary civilian and her condition of isolation–as an effect of external forces, a strategy of self-protection, part of the legacy of a catastrophic past, or an opportunity for future survival.

Up until now, the city of Monowe has always been presented in fragments, whether displaying architectural remnants or elements with specific functions, such as the entryway, the factory, the museum, or the watchtower. These elements bring into play the social use of these architectures as institutions, a dimension put into crisis by the solitary status of the inhabitant. Thus, the city offers the opportunity to analyze, in abstract, the rules and conventions rendered obsolete by the disappearance of the community.

For this exhibition at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Monowe will be presented for the first time as an overview, in which the individual fragments are temporarily brought together in a fabric of complementary relations and functions. Following its original presentation at MAXXI, the motif of the museum reappears in The City Museum, 2016, a living place of memory undergoing a constant process of elaboration, sedimentation, and renegotiation. Presented here is also the fragment of a new building, the Tribunale, 2019. This courtroom is a materialization of guilt and judgment, a stage upon which the concept of justice makes its appearance in a surreal trial, in which all of the roles collapse into one: the accused and the accuser, the witness and the judge. Almost as if in a backward tracking shot, these architectural structures are included in a maquette, an architectural model which reduces the scale of the elements in order to widen the viewer’s perspective. This dynamic provides a new point of entry to the project in order to better understand its logic and scope as a whole, offering a vantage point that is simultaneously retrospective and prospective, analytical and constructive, concrete and fictitious.Monowe has been realized in collaboration with the architects collective Orizzontale

The exhibition is part of the Grand Tour Contemporaneo, a program of exhibitions and events dedicated to contemporary Italian art promoted by the Contemporary Art Foundations Committee.

Irene Calderoni

(from the exhibition’s pressrelease)

Monowe, 2019. Installation view at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin

Monowe (The City Museum) 1:1, 2016. Installation view at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, TurinWood, polyethylene, perspex, pvc, resin, plaster, marble, sponge, oil color, phenolic foam

Monowe (Tribunale) 1:1, 2019. Installation view at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, TurinIron, wood, pvc, petg, paint, net

Monowe (The residence, the lodge, the shelter) 1:3, 2019. Installation view at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, TurinWood, ropes, concrete, foam, acrylic paint

Monowe (The Powder Room) 1:3, 2019. Installation view at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, TurinWood, acrylic paint

Monowe (Tribunale) 1:3, 2019. Installation view at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, TurinWood, pvc

Monowe (The Terminal Outpost) 1:3, 2019. Installation view at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, TurinIron, wood, polyethylene, paint

Monowe (The City Museum) 1:30, 2019. Installation view at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, TurinWood, epoxy putty, pvc, concrete

Monowe (The Powder Room) 1:30, 2019. Installation view at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, TurinWood, polyethylene, epoxy putty, pvc, concrete

Monowe (The residence, the lodge, the shelter) 1:30, 2019. Installation view at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, TurinWood, resin, concrete

Monowe (The Terminal Outpost) 1:30, 2019. Installation view at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, TurinWood, iron, polyethylene, paint, concrete

Monowe (Tribunale) 1:30, 2019. Installation view at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, TurinWood, epoxy putty, pvc, petg, paint, concrete

Monowe (The Entrance to the City) 1:30, 2019. Installation view at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, TurinWood, pvc, iron, paint, concrete

Monowe (reproducing work) 1:30, 2019. Installation view at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, TurinWood, pvc, polyethylene, epoxy putty, paint, concrete

Ludovica Carbotta Monowe (The Terminal Outpost)

Arsenale, Venezia

May You Live In Interesting Timescurated by Ralph Rugoff The 58th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia, Venice

May 11, 2019 – November 24, 2019

photo: Nuvola Ravera

Ludovica Carbotta’s multifaceted art practice encompasses sculpture, drawing, performance, architecture and writing. She is interested in the physical exploration of urban space, constructing what she calls “fictional site specificity”; she invents imaginary places or imbues real places with fictional contexts, recovering the role of imagination as a way of constructing knowledge.

Over the past years she has been working on a large-scale project, divided into several chapters, entitled Monowe, the name of an imaginary city inhabited by a single person. Through the point of view and experiences of Monowe’s only inhabitant and his/her possible acceptance of the city’s conditions, Carbotta explores seclusion as a state through which to abandon social norms, rules and logics that have been taken for granted in society. The latest instalment is Monowe (The Terminal Outpost) (2019), a watchtower turned upside down, situated outside the Arsenale. In the one-resident world of Monowe, this structure would never have exercised its vigilant purpose, as there would have been no one else to surveil; here, amid the surrounding cityscape, its inversion makes it inaccessible and again defies its apparent purpose. This dysfunctional ground control, designed in its original form to survey the territory from above, here symbolises the obsession humans have with control and hints at the futility of such efforts.

The artist will be showing another work from the Monowe series in the former gunpowder store of Forte Marghera, a 19th-century fortress built, next to the city of Venice, built across the lagoon from Venice. Connecting with the metaphorical resonance of the site – a building designed to protect the outside environment from its explosive internal content – Carbotta is presenting a new sculptural installation on warehouse style shelving. The Powder Room (2019) explores the ways in which the human imagination might trigger powerful emotions that could hurt the body, even without any imminent actual danger.

Cloé Perrone

(58th Venice Biennale catalogue’s text)

Monowe (The Terminal Outpost), 2019. Arsenale Venezia, 58th Venice Biennale, Venice.Iron, wood, concrete, pigments, glass with waved wire, concrete bricks, neon lights, steel wire rope

Monowe (The Terminal Outpost), 2019. Detail view.Arsenale Venezia, 58th Venice Biennale, Venice.

Monowe (The Terminal Outpost), 2019. Arsenale Venezia, 58th Venice Biennale, Venice.Iron, wood, concrete, pigments, glass with waved wire, concrete bricks, neon lights, steel wire rope

Monowe (The Terminal Outpost), 2019. Arsenale Venezia, 58th Venice Biennale, Venice.

Monowe (The Terminal Outpost), 2019. Detail view.Arsenale Venezia, 58th Venice Biennale, Venice.

Ludovica Carbotta

Monowe (The Powder Room)Forte Marghera, Mestre – Polveriera Austriaca

May You Live In Interesting Timescurated by Ralph Rugoff The 58th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia, Venice May 11, 2019 – November 24, 2019

photo: Nuvola Ravera

Ludovica Carbotta’s multifaceted art practice encompasses sculpture, drawing, performance, architecture and writing. She is interested in the physical exploration of urban space, constructing what she calls “fictional site specificity”; she invents imaginary places or imbues real places with fictional contexts, recovering the role of imagination as a way of constructing knowledge.

Over the past years she has been working on a large-scale project, divided into several chapters, entitled Monowe, the name of an imaginary city inhabited by a single person. Through the point of view and experiences of Monowe’s only inhabitant and his/her possible acceptance of the city’s conditions, Carbotta explores seclusion as a state through which to abandon social norms, rules and logics that have been taken for granted in society. The latest instalment is Monowe (The Terminal Outpost) (2019), a watchtower turned upside down, situated outside the Arsenale. In the one-resident world of Monowe, this structure would never have exercised its vigilant purpose, as there would have been no one else to surveil; here, amid the surrounding cityscape, its inversion makes it inaccessible and again defies its apparent purpose. This dysfunctional ground control, designed in its original form to survey the territory from above, here symbolises the obsession humans have with control and hints at the futility of such efforts.

The artist will be showing another work from the Monowe series in the former gunpowder store of Forte Marghera, a 19th-century fortress built, next to the city of Venice, built across the lagoon from Venice. Connecting with the metaphorical resonance of the site – a building designed to protect the outside environment from its explosive internal content – Carbotta is presenting a new sculptural installation on warehouse style shelving. The Powder Room (2019) explores the ways in which the human imagination might trigger powerful emotions that could hurt the body, even without any imminent actual danger.

Cloé Perrone

(58th Venice Biennale catalogue’s text)

Monowe (The Powder Room), 2019. Exterior installation view.Forte Marghera, Mestre – Polveriera Austriaca, 58th Venice Biennale, Venice.

Monowe (The Powder Room), 2019. Interior installation view.Forte Marghera, Mestre – Polveriera Austriaca, 58th Venice Biennale, Venice.

Moderate RD 01, 2019. Interior installation view.Wood, iron, paint

Moderate RD 01, 2019. Interior installation detail view.Forte Marghera – Polveriera Austriaca, 58th Venice Biennale, Venice.

Moderate SD 01, 2019. Interior installation view.Wood, iron, paint, sponge, anti uv acrylic paint

Mild CD 01, 2019. Interior installation view.Wood, iron, paint, epoxy putty

Moderate AD 01, 2019. Interior installation view.Wood, iron, paint, concrete, polyurethane foam

Moderate AD 01, 2019. Interior installation detail view.Wood, iron, paint, concrete, polyurethane foam

Severe DD 01, 2019. Interior installation view.Wood, iron, paint, sponge, anti uv acrylic paint, stone

Severe DD 01, 2019. Interior installation detail view.Wood, iron, paint, sponge, anti uv acrylic paint, stone

Severe UD 01, 2019. Interior installation view.Wood, iron, paint, hips recycled plastic

Severe UD 01, 2019. Interior installation view.Wood, hips recycled plastic

Monowe (The Powder Room), 2019. Exterior installation view.Forte Marghera – Polveriera Austriaca, 58th Venice Biennale, Venice.

Monowe (the residence, the lodge, the shelter), 2019sculptures, installation

Fondazione smART, Romecurated by Ilaria Gianni

“And so she discovered Monowe: an imaginary city, which is above and beyond the ex-isting urban landscapes and which manifests itself through various elements: architecture, infrastructures, institutions and documents. Halfway between a ruin and an open build-ing site, Monowe aims to replicate the current solitary and individualistic urban lifestyle, radicalizing it to the point of constructing an intense condition for a single person. On the one hand it responds to the growing fear of others, by offering a protected zone, and on the other hand it reflects the model of a utopian city as a way of rethinking the urban space, going so far as to contradict its very identity, so that it is no longer a human set-tlement made up of many individuals but a place belonging to and dedicated to a single person.

Suspended in the clouds, where the air is fresher and the sky is always present, made of raised footbridges, gangways and flyovers, Monowe leaves the real world at its feet, making use of the very essence and substance of lightness. Despite its undefined geographical location, its sole inhabitant boldly and spontaneously crosses its threshold by ascending a spiral staircase that allows only one person to enter at a time, from where the distance – physical as well as metaphorical – from the ground can easily be perceived. After climbing this staircase, the entrance to Monowe closes behind its new citizen. Here, convinced of the inherent potential of this protected and silent place, she begins to benefit from her isolation and to construct her own life, of which she is the sole protagonist. The city dedicates all its care and attention to her alone, with the support of some highly advanced technologies. Thus she eats her meals in exclusive restaurants where it is only possible to speak about herself, she goes to cinemas that only show films she desires, and control towers, that are reminiscent of ancient defensive systems, do not allow anyone else to approach, giving her the privileged role of a protagonist. Also the museum of the city has the function of preserving the subjective and individual memory of its only inhabitant. Thus the artefacts on display are translations of personal mental processes, physical experiences, and re-elaborations of knowledge that reaffirm the existence of its only visitor.”

(Excerpt from “The Portrait of a Mirrored House” by Ilaria Giani from a publication accompanying the exhibition)

Real View, 2019 / Installation view at Fondazione smART, RomeConcrete, wood, plaster, epoxy putty, ropes, poyethylene, pvc, projection

Photo courtesy: Francesco Basileo

Real View, 2019 / Detail view at Fondazione smART, RomeConcrete, wood, plaster, epoxy putty, ropes, poyethylene, pvc, projection

Photo courtesy: Francesco Basileo

Monowe (the residence, the lodge, the shelter), 2019Installation view at Fondazione smART, Rome

Monowe (the residence, the lodge, the shelter), 2019Detail exterior installation view at Fondazione smART, Rome


Marisa, 2018 / Installation view at Fondazione smART, Rome

Chair, 2019 / Installation view at Fondazione smART, Romewood, wheels

Rolling, 2019 / Installation detail view at Fondazione smART, RomeFoam rubber, paint, ropes, epoxy putty; Foam rubber, wool, zip

Monowe, (trade fair), 2018sculptures, installation

Present Future Artissima 2018, Turin, IT

For Present Future at Artissima, Carbotta presents a new chapter of the Monowe project—a city of a parallel dimension designed for only one person. This provocation reflects in one sense on the isolating mechanisms of the gated community phenomena, while at the same time considering the bunkers prepared for the apocalypse, both forms of isolation, places and states of being from which to take refuge, or abandon and escape the social norms, rules, and logics that have been taken for granted in society.

The installation, playing with the form of the trade show as the con-text of the fair, is inspired by the tool and safety equipment indust-ry, and will displays objects, machines and structures designed to protect and save the “self.” This new chapter, part of a larger cycle of works, aims to explore the paradox of protection in a completely isolated condition, and of an urban environment becoming sentient.

Monowe (trade fair), november 2018Artissima, Turin, Italy

installation view, photo courtesy Roberto Ruiz

Monowe, Lifehi Jack, november 2018Artissima, Turin, Italy


“This safety jacket becomes useful when the body is so-mehow too present. It is designed to protect a physique

deemed too active, which could become problematic in terms of well-being. This is the ideal sort of gear for

feeling the entirety of one’s own body, while slowing it down in order to reach a more meditative state of self.”

Monowe, Essen Zadime (01), november 2018

Artissima, Turin, Italyinstallation view, photo courtesy Roberto Ruiz

“On a windy day when the only citizen might get a bit lost because she cannot recognize the surrounding atmosphere, she will always find comfort using Essen Zadime. She will again recognizing herself just by

inhaling some of herself.”

Monowe, Bobby, november 2018Artissima, Turin, Italyinstallation view, photo courtesy Roberto Ruiz

“Bobby is basically a state-of-the-art booby trap, which seems like it was already triggered. It is the most obvious device to afford certain protections from the ‘other,’ or to simply be made aware of an intrusion. The fact that it is already triggered represent a sort of a paradox, since no intruder will appear in Mono-we. Maybe it is the memory or trace of an intrusion. (Perhaps it is shown this way as a demonstration, for sales reasons.)”

Monowe, Farfi Nally, november 2018Artissima, Turin, Italy


“Nally is a special type of visual gear, meant to distance the observed from the user. When used even the closest elements will finally appear far away.”

Monowe, Handle Barry, november 2018


“This family of objects: Handle Barry, Philip Skin and the others are portable totems and amulets, each with a specific function. If the citi-zen of Monowe forgets about what it means to have a body, one can

always rely on, for example Phil Handem, to feel the palm of her hand. Phil Scholder will also provide assistance to be conscious of the space

between the side of the breast and the arm.”

Monowe, Philip Skin, november 2018


Monowe, Phil Handem, november 2018


Monowe, Hanna Dle (01)(02)(03), november 2018


“These are handles, but not simply that, because they manage to bring support and comfort. They can be placed on the wall or floor, but also

on furniture or wherever they may be needed. The number of handles is proportionally equivalent to the feeling of safety for Monowe’s citizen.”

Monowe, an interview, 2017 performance, audio

March 2018, Jan Van Eyck Academy, Maastricht, NL actress Stine Sampersvideo documentation: https://vimeo.com/260675332password: radiomonowe

November 2017, blank, Turin, ITactress Ondina Quadri

Monowe (an imaginary city for one person only), begun in 2016, is constantly evolving in a multitude of complementary expressions, including the emergence of architectural fragments, the publication of documents on the historical origins of the city and the public ma-nifestation of its only inhabitant. For Monowe, an interview the only inhabitant of the city makes her appearance, questioning her own existence in this imaginary context.

script contributions by Carlo Fossati, GianAntonio Gilli, Oriz-zontale, Matteo Alis Respino, Sara Filippi

Monowe (an interview), march 2018Van Eyck, Maastricht, Netherlands

Performance photo courtesy Werner Mantz Lab Van Eyck

Monowe (an interview), march 2018Van Eyck, Maastricht , Netherlands

Performance; audio, headphones, speaker, silicon rubber,shrink wrapping polyethylene photo courtesy Werner Mantz Lab Van Eyck

Monowe (an interview), november 2017blank, Turin, Italy

Performance photo courtesy Carlo Fossati

Monowe (the terminal outpost), 2017Installation in the public space, Graz, Kunstlerhaus Museum

In Graz I present Monowe (the terminal outpost), a fragment of this city, connecting its elevated dimension with the current cityscape. A deserted outpost lies on the outdoor area of Kunstlerhaus Museum: taking the shape of an upside down guard tower, Monowe (the terminal outpost) is probably used by its only inhabitant, that comes from above, to control the bounda-ries of the imaginary city of Monowe. The terminal outpost is the last mean of protection that shows the ridicoulness of the attempt of controlling a city that is not visible at all, a territory that is lacking in itself.

Monowe (the terminal outpost), September 2017Architectural installation, wood, pvc, shrink wrapping polyethyleneexecutive project Orizzontaleinstallation view Kunstlerhaus Museum, Graz, Austria photo courtesy Markus Krottendorfer

Monowe (the terminal outpost), September 2017Architectural installation, wood, pvc, shrink wrapping polyethylene

executive project Orizzontaleinstallation view Kunstlerhaus Museum, Graz, Austria

photo courtesy Markus Krottendorfer

Monowe (the city museum), 2016installation at MAXXI Museum- Premio Italia 2016 , courtesy Fondazione MAXXI

The historical function of the museum is to preserve the memory, conserve history of artefacts or to enter in the account of the history the contemporary culture. Rather than a place for the preservation of historical and cultural memory of a society, Monowe (the city museum) houses the subjective and individual memory of his only inhabitant. Visited by one person, this museum translates into objects and three-dimensional elements mental processes, memories and physical experiences of its only inhabitant. The Museum of Monowe materialize processes of knowledge that are based on the imagination and on the mise-en-scène of mnemonic acts: the only visitor come to the museum not so much to forget her-his past, but rather to be able to reaffirm her-his existence. From the walls of the preceding architecture up to the objects contained within it, the mnemonic exercises that the resident makes and the traces left by the objects contained in it, Monowe affirms the importance of the relationship between memory, imagination and construction of the self. The rooms of the museum of Monowe consist, in a reinterpretation of the armory architectural volumes that was in the site before the construction of the MAXXI.

The Monowe’s museum is a place of the mind, where memories, sensations and removals are shaped into objects. These objects are the works preserved in this museum. The exhibition consists of reconstruction and re-interpretations of historical and contemporary artworks, arising from memories, digital documents and anecdotes. They are objects that leave traces on the place or they are consumed over time.

The only inhabitant of Monowe tries desperately to regain possession of the objects that inhabit the museum space. She does it compulsively, moving or trasforming the objects intuitively and without a clear line of reasoning. Far from any human contact, what remains to her, is only this report, obviously privileged, with material objects. This incessant and frenzied activity actually is for me like the materialization of a mnemonic process: the porosity of the objects and their malleable materials, are a metaphor of mnemonic acts which alter the reality of things and deform it according to our preferences, insights, tastes, but also the infinite relationships that are created with other memories and experiences.

Monowe (the city museum), September 2016Architectural installation, wood, pvc, shrink wrapping polyethyleneexecutive project Orizzontale; installation view MAXXI, Rome, Italy

photo courtesy Musacchio & Ianniellocourtesy Fondazione MAXXI

Monowe (the city museum), September 2016sculpture, wood, rubber phenolyc foam

installation view MAXXI, Rome, Italyphoto courtesy Musacchio & Ianniello

courtesy Fondazione MAXXI

Monowe (the city museum), September 2016sculpture, wood, rubber phenolyc foam

installation view MAXXI, Rome, Italyphoto courtesy Luis Do Rosario


Monowe (the city museum), September 2016sculpture, wood, sponge, oil color



Monowe (the city museum), September 2016sculpture, plaster; performance actress Ondina Quadri



Monowe (the city museum), September 2016Architectural installation, wood, pvc, shrink wrapping polyethyleneexecutive project Orizzontale; installation view MAXXI, Rome, Italy

photo courtesy Musacchio & Ianniellocourtesy Fondazione MAXXI

Monowe (reproducing work), 2016Installation in the public space Gallarate (MI), sculptures Museo MAGA Gallarate (MI), produced by Museo MAGA Premio Gallarate

The promise of a tech future is already vanished in this episode introducing the need of the inhabitant to establish a direct and active relationship with the objects in the surroundings, revealing the uncertainty of the past civilization. This episode, trough the formalization of a workshop to reproduce everyday objects, explores the individual’s need for manual work.In the specific case of Gallarate I focused on the individual’s relationship with the industrial dimension, understood as the action of work. What looks like the skeleton of a factory fragment appears next to an old chimney, as if it came from a parallel dimension. It is not the faithful reconstruction of the factory, It is not made, in fact, with the original materials with which it was built the factory. It is possible to see, from its manifestation, that is a place both domestic and for work.I was not interested to refer to historical events or facts directly related to Gallarate territory as a narrative structure of the work, but rather to explore the individual’s need to recover a relationship related with the manual work, understood as self-determination.

Monowe (reproducing work), May 2016temporary installation in the public space of Gallarate, Italy

shrink wrapping polyethylene

Monowe (reproducing work), May 2016sculpture, wood, plaster, fabric color dye, cotton

installation view MAGA, Gallarate, ItalyCollection MAGA

Monowe (reproducing work), May 2016sculpture, wood, petg plastic


Monowe (reproducing work), May 2016sculpture, wood, silicon rubber


Monowe, (remnants from the future), 2016fiction novel, photographies, drawings, Santa Cruz De La Sierra (Bolivia) produced by Gasworks (UK) and Kiosko (BO)

Monowe Remnants of the Future (Santa Cruz) is a work in progress project for the construction of an historical context of the origin of the imaginary city of Monowe. Monowe is a project of a city designed for one person only, it brings to excess the contemporary condition of self-isolation and relationship with automatized systems in nowadays societies.

With the aim to find prototypal forms of this completely isolated future way of living, the research conducted in Santa Cruz focuses on the ‘urbanizaciones cerradas’ phenomenon. Visits to several gated communities, interviews with a sociologist and an architect (experts in urbanization) and finally interviews with ad-ministrators, residents and guards of gated communities become the suggestions for Monowe Remnants of the Future (Santa Cruz): a fictio-nal diary, a map and a collection of photographs intertwine all these information and aim to invent the imaginary origin of Monowe.

Monowe, Remnants from the future, april 2016 Kiosko Santa Cruz de la Sierra,

Installation viewCourtesy Gasworks

Monowe, Remnants from the future, april 2016Kiosko Santa Cruz de la Sierra, detail installation viewCourtesy Gasworks

Monowe (entrance to the city), 2016ONpublic, 2016, installation in the public space of Bologna, Italy

In the first chapter of this project I presented two fragments of the city, in the public space of Bologna in Italy. One installation is the entrance gate to Monowe, a stair that shrink to the dimension of a single body meanwhile is growing in height; the other installation is a pillar that will support the system of bridges and walkways of this city. The two structures are installed in public spaces and refer only to a potential deve-lopment of the city, their shape is completing thanks to the narrative of the work, in the form of audio guide (https://soundcloud.com/on-public/monowe), that presents Monowe as a super smart and tech city but its aspect discloses immediately a sort of failure. An incomplete shape that has a decadent brand new aesthetic. The sculptural element in this case presents an aesthetic deliberately incomplete while the audio guide describes the forms to come suggesting the potential use of the city and thus increasing the chances of receiving.In this interpenetration mechanism between not concluded sculptural forms and narrative descriptions, the viewer’s participation happens through the imagination and individual interpretation.

Monowe (entrance to the city), January 2016temporary installation in the public space of Bologna, Italy

wood, iron, shrink wrapping polyethylenephoto courtesy Chiara Balsamo

Falsetto, 2017-2018series of sculpture and site specific installation

audio / 11.30, featuring Giulio Pignatta , voice Bridget Mullen https://soundcloud.com/ludovica-5/falsetto

from the press release: In Falsetto, Ludovica Carbotta’s first solo show in Galería Marta Cervera, the exhibition space tran-sforms into a heterotopic laboratory. The nomenclature of the works itself (tnt-001, twr-001, brdg-001, rch-001, wll-001) refers us of serial test samples. Five prototypes of recognizable structures are presented: a cabin, a tower, a bridge, a wall and an arch, each built in a different material such as wood, cement, silicon rubber, sponge, foam or plastic. The shape, the structures’ aesthetic and the neutral colors bring to mind post-apocalyptic urban landscapes, which can be associated with the notion of disaster/deconstruction and the creative opportunities that arise out of such scenarios. The existing potential when it comes to creating new environments, the manifold ways of reinventing architectures and the crucial role of the imagination in that process of creation are all issues that are being explored and experimented with in this laboratory, where something we can think of as “last architectures” have been produced.Falsetto is a term for a singing method that singers – tenors in particular – employ to reach high notes. In general, the technique consists on singing notes so far off the singer’s usual range that they sound artificial. Carbotta encountered the word falsetto in her research on bunkers and other insulation structures built during the Cold War. During this time, the United Kingdom developed a broadcasting system for times of war called WTBS (Wartime Broadcasting System), through which prerecorded messages would be broadcasted via radio in case of a nuclear attack. One of the passwords that the British government chose to authorize the broadcast of a national warning was ‘falsetto’. The messa-ges were, after all, fake, since they were not being broadcasted live, but they tried to emulate a bro-adcast in real time in order to transmit an increased feeling of tranquility to the people. This laborato-ry is a fictitious environment and, to a certain extent, it is also fake, so far as the architectural models are representations of a reality to which we don’t have access. When we walk around the exhibition space, it is difficult to distinguish which elements belong to the gallery’s structure and which ones to the installation; both spaces have affected each other, and it’s hard to know where each one belongs.The architectural models and the gallery’s architecture have blended, shaping a newenvironment, a laboratory that generates creative force through adaptation. For instance, in the work tnt-001 we can find clear references to the decoration of the gallery floor’s tiles. On the other hand, Falsetto also activates a state of emergency here – one conceived for scena-rios of isolation, in which the architecture transmits messages to try to communicate with people.Falsetto, the fictitious laboratory that Ludovica Carbotta has fabricated, integrates a newfictitious context in a real space; a place from which to operate with the imagination to build me-aning. Time stays in the margins, as the exhibition prioritizes the exploration of spaces and envi-ronments. Unstable and unpredictable, these environments conform a ground from which to delve into the potential of the chance encounter, or the power of the unforeseen.

Gema Melgar

Somebody is living in the MET (01-02), 2018sculpture

concrete, rope75 cm x 50 cm x 75 cm35 cm x 50 cm x 25 cm

Falsetto, 2017exhibition view at Galeria Marta Cervera

Falsetto wll-001, 2017sculpture

petg plastic 60 cm x 250 cm x 10 cm

details exhibition view Galeria Marta Cervera

Falsetto twr-001, 2017sculpture

foam, oil color, wood, silicone140 cm x 60 cm x 60 cm


Falsetto rch-001, 2017sculpture

silicone rubber, polystyrene, buckets90 cm x 70 cm x 80 cm


Falsetto brdg-001, 2017sculpture

foam, plastic 100 cm x 90 cm x 50 cm


Falsetto tnt-002, 2017sculpture; concrete, foam, belt

100 cm x 80 cm x 60 cmdetails exhibition view Van Eyck Academy

photo courtesy Werner Mantz Lab Van Eyck

Falsetto twr-002, 2018sculpture and site specific installation

foam, oil color, wood, plastic80 cm x 20 cm x 20 cm

details exhibition view Van Eyck Academyphoto courtesy Werner Mantz Lab Van Eyck

Falsetto, 2018sculpture and site specific installation

details exhibition view Inches, Feet, Verse, Metre Marselleria, New Yorkphoto courtesy Dario Lasagni


raku ceramic15 cm x 15 cm x 5 cm



silicon rubber, polysterene, plastic crates60 cm x 60 cm x 30 cm


details exhibition view Inches, Feet, Verse, Metre Marselleria, New York; photo courtesy Dario Lasagni

Falsetto brdg-002, 2018sculpturewood, paint, rubber60 cm x 40 cm x 20 cm

Falsetto twr-002, 2018sculpturefoam, oil color, plastic pots60 cm x 25 cm x 25 cm

Falsetto twr-003, 2018sculpturefoam, oil color, plastic crate100 cm x 25 cm x 40 cm


silicon rubber, polysterene, plastic crates60 cm x 60 cm x 30 cm

The original is unfaithful to the translation, 2015Series of sculptures, audio, video

Influenced by the literary genre of ekphrasis, I have focused my research on the importance of reproduction and representation in the History of Art and on their practical application\potential. Therefore, since every translation is transformative, I use the ekphrasis to experience a place or an object as a novelty\epiphany.The original is unfaithful to the translation is an installation composed byarchitectural elements that reproduce the rooms in which I have lived in the last years as I remember them. The project analyses domestic space in relation to time and imagination. The rooms are all diverse and independent within each other. They have different size; they are assembled using dissi-milar materials; they contain different objects – both imaginary and real. In some of the spaces, the audience can step in – tough none of them reach a 1:1 scale – and can be installed separately through space. Reflecting on the meaning of owning, belonging and time I decided to activate the installation with three different audio recording: a phone number with a voicemail re-corded by an estate agent who is promoting to customers a class mansion, a cctv camera monitor with audio interception recording a dialogue of two squatters that are considering to enter the house and an audio guided tour performed by a guide of an historical house museum. Finally the audio con-nects the physical space of the rooms with the passage of time: he reveals three different imaginative scenarios concerning with the past use of the architecture (the art historian), the present utilize of it (the constant actual life condition of the squatter) and a future possible picture (the estate agent that prospects an upcoming life inside that space).

Thanks to Formech, Frances Sands, Saul Williams, Pau Garcia, Francesca Colussi

The original is unfaithful to the translation, 2015Series of sculptures, audios, video

view of the installation at the Degree Show MFA Goldsmiths 2015

The original is unfaithful to the translation, 2015sculpture, wood, iron, petg plastic, sponge, oil color, paint

installation view Degree Show MFA Goldsmiths 2015

The original is unfaithful to the translation, 2015sculpture, wood, ear plugs


The original is unfaithful to the translation, 2015sculpture, wood, concrete, petg plastic, metalinstallation view Degree Show MFA Goldsmiths 2015

The original is unfaithful to the translation, 2015sculpture, wood, concrete, tracing paper, perspexinstallation view Regreso al futuro, La Casa Encendida, 2018

The original is unfaithful to the translation, 2015sculpture, wood, cables, elastic, metal


The original is unfaithful to the translation, 2015audio, video

... a phone number with a voicemail recorded by an estate agent who is promoting to customers a class mansion...

AUDIO: https://soundcloud.com/ludovica-5/voltaic-arc-doubt/s-FNcOT

...a cctv camera monitor with audio interception recording a dialogue of twopeople that are considering to enter the house...

AUDIO: https://soundcloud.com/ludovica-5/squatters/s-5eOi4VIDEO and AUDIO: https://vimeo.com/135814701 (password: squatting)

... an audio guided tour performed by a guide of an historical house museum...

AUDIO: https://soundcloud.com/ludovica-5/divo-laccata-turbo/s-nQ7Fi

Plenum, 2015Arte in Memoria 8, 2015Sinagoga di Ostia Antica,Roma, Italy

The work Plenum is an architectural model, made out of concrete, that show a future archaeology. It is based on the same plan of the Synagogue of Ancient Ostia. An audioguide goes with the sculpture; the guide delivered a text that provided explanations and hypothesis of the different functions of the architectural structure, recorded both in human language and in Linear Timecode language. Plenum could be a shelter or a gathering place for people that lived or will live there. During the process of the work, firstly, I consulted different texts, mainly reports from archaeological excavations, and I worked on the material that is missing and that is the main object of historical hypothesis.The process of the work, apparently could be a reproduction or a reconstruction of what was missing but, actually this process didn’t follow any philological reasons, but constitutes an over-interpretation of the sources.Looking at the archaeological descriptions I thought specifically to the literary tradition of ekphrasis. I wonder if these can be considered as reproductions or translations of the building itself, since it is a transition from one language to another. I think the most interesting aspect of ekphrasis is in its manifestation as a method of visual and linguistic appropriation of a work or an environment. It could be defined as a phase transition: the physical material of the concrete form returns to be imaginative material. Proceeding in this cycle of phase transitions:I realized a 3D form starting from written materials, then when the sculpture was finished, then I described it with a text, in order to suggest and build a fictional narration around this object.

Plenum, 2015Concrete80 x 60 x 40 cmAudioguida, 7.13 min / Audioguide, 6.46 min. Featuring Giulio PignattaVoci/ voices: Eleonora Pietrosanto, Inês Geraldes Cardoso, Francesca LanzaCourtesy of the artist

Link Italian / Linear Timecode guided tour:https://soundcloud.com/ludovica-5/plenum-ita

Link English / Linear Timecode guided tour:https://soundcloud.com/ludovica-5/plenum-eng

Plenum, 2015sculpture, concretel

installation view Arte in Memoria 8, 2015 Sinagoga di Ostia Antica,Roma, Italy

Plenum, 2015sculpture, concrete

installation view Arte in Memoria 8, 2015 Sinagoga di Ostia Antica,Roma, Italy

Plenum, 2015sculpture, concrete

installation view A House, Halfway,Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Torino Italy

A motorway is a very strong wind, 2014Care/of, Milan, Italy

For A motorway is a very strong wind I collected several contributions from artists, critics, and researchers, asking to provide their own descriptions of what they perceive as an ideal place for a community, based on experiential models, real or imaginary. Some of the descriptions relate to the architectural structure of specific places, some other simply described the function of these spaces. In some cases contributors wrote about community rules, linguistic systems adopted, neologisms and internal ways of communicating within the context of group daily life. Starting from their contributions, I interpreted written descriptions to create a physical environment, imagine the traces of an unknown place, and translating these words into an actual space: an installation made by sculptures, drawing and photographs that gave three-dimensional life to words. A motorway is a very strong wind was presented in three different venues: Careof, Milan(March 2014); Blank, Turin (May 2014); and Museum Barengasse, Zurich (October 2014).

A motorway is a very strong wind, 2014installation

installation view at Careof, Milan, Italy

A motorway is a very strong wind (the window that faces the sky), 2014

installationdetail installation view at Careof, Milan, Italy

A motorway is a very strong wind, 2014installation

detail installation view at Careof, Milan, Italy

A motorway is a very strong wind (archive of barter), 2014detail installation view at Careof, Milan, Italy

A motorway is a very strong wind (imprison themselves in order to free themselves)/(fill all the space, even the one not visible), 2014

installationdetail installation view at Careof, Milan, Italy

Apart, we are together, 2015Grand Domestic Revolution, Careof - Milan (March 2015) ARTSituacions, at Museum Villa Croce -Genoa- , Macro Museum -Rome- , and Museum Matadero -Madrid- (2015-2016).

Following this first phase, in 2015, I started working on a new chapter titled Apart, we are together.I focused my attention on an aspect that regularly emerged in numerous de-scriptions collected: the need of individual isolation, in condition of communal living (such as the need for an isolated room in family contexts or the need for an isolated working station in conditions of co-working, etc). Therefore I began producing imaginary objects that can be easily adopted in real-life situations, in order to favour these fundamental compulsions of isolation expressed by many of the contributors (such as the Blackout Stone, a device able to crate a temporary black out; the Urlatoio, a space for isolation and protection; and the Muffle Phone that helps two persons communicating with no disturbance in context of crowded family/working meetings).

Apart we are together (Sky Glasses for Dreamy Travellers, Blackout Stone, Cloak for Sensorial Estrangement), 2015

installationdetail installation view at Matadero, Madrid, Spain

Apart we are together (Kairos watch), 2015sculpture 25 cm x15 cm x 20 cm

brass, silicon rubber

Apart we are together (Muffle phone), 2015sculpture 30 cm x15 cm x15cm each

plastic, foam, metaldrawing 35 cm x 50 cm

Got the void / Fix kit, 2014sculpture and photo seriesDatabase, 2014Residency, Carrara, Italy

The quarries are a gold mine for some, for others the ultimate expression of the devastation on nature made by human kind; for others the sublime challenge between human imagination and the supernatural. In my opinion it is a large sculpture in the open air. Walk physically across this landscape becomes an op-portunity to explore the relationship between solid and void into matter through the process of cast and imprint. Looking at the Monte Serrone, apparently entire when viewed from the centre of Carrara, but dug on the other sides, I worked at a scale model of the negative missing part, the one excavated from the extraction, creating two sculptures theoretically matching walls facing southeast and northe-ast. In the photographic project Fix Kit I worked on the imaginary reconstruction of the surface of the mountains.I choose some little stones that I could hold in my hands so I matched these along the skyline of the mountains, in order to fix the natural profile of the landscape.

Got the Void, 2014sculpture, white marble80 cm x 60 cm x 60 cm

installation view Panta ReiMuseo del Marmo, Carrara, Italy

Got the Void, 2014sculpture, white marble

detail installation view Panta ReiMuseo del Marmo, Carrara, Italy

Fix Kit, 2014series of photographs

inkjet print on cotton paperedition of 3 + 1 AP

Without Walls, 2013Vitrine 270°, GAM, Torino

Without Walls, the project by Ludovica Carbotta for Vitrine 270°, is inspired by GAM in Turin and its vast collection of works dated from 1700 to the most con-temporary research. Through this work the artist rethinks the visionary “imaginary museum” submitted in 1947 by André Malraux, made possible through photo-graphs of works of art.In Without Walls though, through a distortion that characterizes her approach to reality, Carbotta uses drawings to reproduce a series of works significant for her formation.The artist occupies the walls of the Vitrine space with the drawing of a reproduc-tion of Conical Intersect, created by Gordon Matta-Clark in 1975 in the centre of Paris (close to the spot where the Pompidou Museum was later built). The referen-ce to a central work in the re-elaboration of the relations between art and urban space and between artist and institution, gives the artist the ideal location for her imaginary museum.On the various floors and in the rooms of the apartments eviscerated by the conical vacuum created by Matta- Clark, Carbotta places drawings of the works in her ideal collection. On different paper supports, roughly sketched by the fast stroke of the artist, the drawn works are grouped in significant themes, exami-ning in depth and from different viewpoints the relations between human body, architecture, and the ideologies that they convey. Abundantly reproduced in the books consulted by the artist during her formation, the works chosen by Carbotta are mainly by male artists. The artist though, through drawing, personalizes this gallery of masterpieces, re-elaborating them with a personal criterion.

(text by Stefano Collicelli Cagol)

Without Walls, 2013drawing and watercolour on wood and paper 360cmx800 cm

installation view at GAM, Turin, Italy

Without Walls, 2013drawing and watercolour on wood and paper 360cmx800 cm

detail installation view at GAM, Turin, Italy

Arco rovesciato, 2013Alle radici della democrazia, GAM, Torino

Arco rovesciato by Ludovica Carbotta stresses the presence of conflict as a funda-mental element in any democracy. At the same time, she underlines its limits, as when it results in the damaging of cultural heritage.In the work made especially for Alle radici della democrazia, the artist investigates the aesthetic potential in the ruinous act of throwing colour bombs atbuildings and monuments. In Arco rovesciato, Carbotta redirects her conside-rations (and rebellion) against the persistence of power by building an arch that includes two different time periods on its facades. On one side the Roman period (traditionally created to honour the military victories of an emperor), and on the other side the Arc de la Défense in Paris, celebratory monument of one of the directional districts in Paris. Carbotta has already investigated the forms generatedby acts of protest by demonstrators in cities in the past, for example taking inspiration from the barricades improvised with elements found lying around. Arco rovesciato confirms this interest for the artist, stressing the action of staining the urban architectures considered symbols of power with colour bombs.While the arch is meant to allow an imaginary community to recognize itself, the traces left by the colour bombs represent, according to the artist, the affirmation of single personalities, tied by the common ideals expressed through protest.In the construction of the work Carbotta asked to several artists to join her in the act of throwing colour bombs.

(text by Stefano Collicelli Cagol)

Arco rovesciato, 2013, styrofoam, cement, paint, 300 cm x 300 cm x150 cm

installation view at GAM, Turin, Italy

Arco rovesciato, 2013, styrofoam, cement, paint, 300 cm x 300 cm x150 cm

deatil installation view at GAM, Turin, Italy

Spazio rubato, 2011Iveagh Gardens, Dublin Dublin Contemporary 2011

To get concrete and motion less the temporary space occupied by people, giving to the architectural space constituted by movements of people a sculptural mea-ning.The aim of the project is to create from a temporary habit, such as occupying public space taking sun or reading and so on, some different landmarks that also could be useful for people to sit or to orient in a public space.

spazio rubato, 02, 2011series of public sculptures, concrete, variable dimensions

installation view at Iveagh Gardens, Dublin Dublin Contemporary 2011

spazio rubato, 01, 2011series of public sculptures, concrete, variable dimensions

installation view at Iveagh Gardens, Dublin Dublin Contemporary 2011

Scala Reale, 2011Terre Vulnerabili, Hangar Bicocca, 2011

This piece is the result of an action, wich determines its final form. The action involves the construction of a structure that is able to support the weight of my body balancing on it. My intention is to proceed upwards, depriving myself of the possibility of turning backwards, of re-tracing my steps. The form grows upwards as I move upwards. I construct step by step the base that allows me to ascend and, as I proceed, I re-use the material utilized previously. The work, re-gardless of the fact that is strictly linked to an action, is not a performance piecerather, it is the testament to, the trace of this movement. The experiential aspect is fundamental even if the lived moment is in some way concealed. The final form is a consequence of my movement and my thought, which opens itself up to unexpected results, since it is subject to the intervention of random factorsemerging within the process itself.Sometimes, coincidence-the element not searched for in advance- contributes to maintaining a part of the work more obscure, hidden. This aspect is a costant of my work: the experience that determines the form is never completelyrevealed to the eyes of the viewer, but constitutes an intimate, personal part.The influence over the final form of the work is generated above all by my movement, by my experience. When I talk about randomness, I’m referring to certain significant aspects linked to the fruition of the work that emerge when allis said and done. It is not about encompassing any event that is external to me; rather, the aim is to discover a relationship between my original attitude and the attitude that I develop during the course of the creation of the work. That which is not seen, which remains hidden, constitutes a fundamental residual space that configures itself both as a space for experimentation and as an element of control and distance from the created work.The work begins with a simple, almost primordial, gesture: the act of hoisting a pile as a principle of building; trying to take possession of a place, of a context.

Scala Reale, 2011sculpture, wood, variable dimensions

installation view at Hangar Bicocca, Milan

Tempo Imperfetto, 201021x21, Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation, Torino

This piece is a reconstruction of the Cappella della S.S. Sindone, designed by Guarino Guarini in Turin at the end of 17th century. It is based on a photograph. I used waste materials to build the reconstruction.I was particularly interested in recreating the inside of the dome. I left the outside to chance. I tried to get physically close to the inner summit of the church by getting down to physical, constructive work.I reconstructed the sacred hollow interior space of the church using physical gestures.The state of emptiness invested in the piece is a legacy of my experience.During the process of construction, my hands and my body began to experience fully the hollow inner part of the dome, which can otherwise not be reached. The physical work actually enabled me to try out and experience this the archi-tectural nucleus of the construction. Becoming engrossed in a tactile experience of the place means becoming the space. Filling the inside, working meticulously solely on the inner part of the dome and leaving the outer skin means reaching the limits of that space or that interior, but at the same time projecting oneself outwards through building and through the materials themselves. The idea of working from a photograph is a material attempt to adopt a process that invol-ves not only subjectivity but also the mechanical potential of the eye itself, as in photography. The first photographic interpretation melts, is translated and reinter-preted during the process of construction.

Tempo imperfetto, 2010 sculpture , wood; 110cm x 250cm x 250cm

installation view at Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation, Torino

Tempo imperfetto, 2010 sculpture , wood; 110cm x 250cm x 250cm

detail installation view at Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation, Torino

Imitazione, 2010-2011Greater Torino, Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation, TorinoEmerging Talents 2011, Strozzina, Florence

Each sculpture can be seen as a sort of self-portrait of the artist, an imi-tation, indeed, of her own body, of which it reproduces a part, the feet, through the cast process.The temporary cavity produced by the sinking of the artist’s feet in a clayey soil was filled by a concrete cast that gave a material, permanent shape to the presence of her body in the earth. The form thus obtained beca- me the basis for a further construction, a sort of pillar that supports a new concrete cast, whose weight, added to that of the basis, equals the weight of the artist herself. The work is an attempt to give consistence to the ephemeral, by transforming the experience of a fleeting physical contact into a material, tangible and lasting structure. Although the ma-king process requires the repetition of certain gestures, each Imitazione is different from the other, as every trace is unique, being the result of an unrepeatable event.

(text by Irene Calderoni)

Imitazione (04) 35x35x100 cm (05) 35x30x70 cm, 2011series of sculpture , concrete

installation view at at Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation, Torinophoto courtesy Maurizio D’Elia

Imitazione (01) 35x35x100 cm, 2010series of sculpture , concrete

costruttore di mondi molto simili al nostro, 2009Greater Torino, Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation, TorinoCostruttore di mondi molto simili al nostro, Placentia Arte, Piacenza

The project costruttore di mondi molto simili al nostro includes a series of works focused on the relationship between the visual and the highly ima-ginative inside the urban experience. I consider as “urban experience” the attitude, both mental and physical, driving me to describe the peri-meter I live into, to approach it with consciousness...almost warily and to explore its surroundings, its smells, its air, light or shadow accesses, the ability of the green of bending and penetrating , the regularity and the fracture. I see the city as a container, or better, every moment as only one of the possible containers. I’m referring to the endless cities coming one after the other in the space of a day, of the following and so on... Orga-nism in an everlasting state of metamorphosis, my look too approaches it already mixed...changing. My working method aims at perpetuating this movement through the drawing line, the controlled chaos of built and assembled materials coming back to an imaginary of “building in beco-ming”. In the work called dust to stardust perspective joins the fragments, the existing and imagined forms of cities and, meanwhile, it breaks them up hinting possible directions only on an indefinite extension of paper. They are sceneries eroded by wind in slow transformation. The frag-ments become three-dimensional solids in the work entitled wrapped in thought. In this case the function determines the form: a crate becomes a contraption able to fix the direction of the wind coming through the city streets in an image. The building reveals a quick, jerkily perception but uses, to reach its purpose, a slow and diluted in time method: the fresco’s preparation technique. In the box some dust, collected on the monuments and buildings of the city, is stored; this turns into the sinopite that, through the wind strength, passes through a feather duster stretched behind a “day” (plank of fresh plaster) so that dust outlines the silhouette of the landscape the box is directed towards.

wrapped in thought, 2009sculpture, wood, plastic, plaster, iron, steel, paper, dust, fiber 50 cmx 40


wrapped in thought, 2009sculpture, wood, plastic, plaster, iron, steel, paper, dust, fiber 50 cmx 40

detail installation view at at Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation, Torinophoto courtesy Maurizio D’Elia

esterno, particolare, 2009Greater Torino, Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation, Torino

The work is a template representing the cross-section of a street, from building to building. Made out of cardboard, the template is a relief map of all the sections and uneven elements, from the building’s socle to the sidewalk to the manhole, down to all the imperfections and slopes of the pavement. The result is a painstaking 1:1 scale model of a minusculefragment of the urban space - ideally, the first stage of an impossible project, i.e. making a model of the whole city, and then turn its axis by 90 degrees. The work is indeed shown in vertical position, a change in per-spective that suggests the paradoxical image of an entirely perpendicular city, folding upon itself like a pop-up map.

esterno, particolare, 2011sculpture, reboard, 600x100 cm


esterno, particolare, 2011sculpture, reboard, 600x100 cm

deatil installation view at at Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation, Torinophoto courtesy Maurizio D’Elia

Progetto Diogene, 2007-2012Turin

Besides from my individual practice I shared a collective project: between 2007 and 2012, I was part of ProgettoDiogene, based in an old tram carriage in the middle of a roundabout of the public space of Torino.Through a program of international residencies, and an experiment on self-education, we investigated the philosophical concept of urban bivouac as existential practice.

www.progettodiogene.eu

ProgettoDiogene, bivaccourbano, 2009-2012,Corso Regio Parco - Corso Verona, Torino

ProgettoDiogene, bivaccourbano, 2007,Lungo Dora Savona, Torino

ProgettoDiogene, bivaccourbano, 2008,Piazza Gran Madre, Torino

The Institute of Things to Come, 2017- ongoingFondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin

The Institute of Things to Come is a research center on futurological scenarios coinceved in collaboration with Valerio Del Baglivo and the Fondazio-ne Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin, Italy. A program of exhibitions with a series of workshops investigate our vision of the present by speculating about future. The project takes inspiration from H. G. Wells’ novel, The Shape of Things to Come, where the author transforms his personal vision of the future into a ficti-tious historical chronicle while narrating the story of the world from 1933, year of publication, to 2106. With these premises, along with the notion of “fiction as critique”, the aim of The Institute of Things to Come is to investigate the ways we project forward our desires, fears and expectations, by training under unknown existential conditions and by imagining alternatives to what already exists.

www.theinstituteofthingstocome.com

Bedwyr Williams Echt, 2017,Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Torino

Workshop Alex Cecchetti, Lina Lapelyte, The Future is a Secret Society 2017

Kapwani Kiwanga Afrogalactica, 2017,Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Torino

Workshop Bedwyr Williams, Tai Shani Demonio Demonio! 2017

Ludovica Carbotta, born in Turin in 1982, lives and works in Barcelona [email protected] / www.ludovicacarbotta.com / ita mobile:+393381731873 Education 2014-2015 MFA Fine Art, Goldsmiths University, London, UK 2011-2012 MA Fine Art (first year) Central Saint Martins London, UK, Scholarship Ariane de Rothschild Prize, Milan, Italy 2008 Advanced Course in Visual Arts – Yona Friedman Visiting Professor, Fondazione Antonio Ratti, Como, Italy 2005 BA in Painting, Academy of Fine Arts, Torino, Italy Grants 2018 New York Prize, IIC, New York, USA 2016 Special Mention Finalist Premio ITALIA, Museo MAXXI, Rome, Italy Winner Prize Gallarate, MAGA, Gallarate Milan, Italy 2012 Finalist Talent Prize, Talarico Editore, Roma, Italy 2011 1° Prize Ariane de Rothschild Prize, Rothschild Foundation, Milano, Italy Finalist Talenti Emergenti, Strozzina Museum, Florence, Italy Selected Solo Exhibitions 2019 Monowe (The powder Room), Special Project Forte Marghera / May You Live In Interesting Times curated by Ralph Rugoff, The 58th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia, Venice Faustine, curated by Xavi Ristol, David Bestué and Enric Farrés Duran, Pipistrello, Baix Emporda – Catalunya, Spain Monowe, curated by Irene Calderoni, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy Monowe (The residence, the lodge, the shelter), curated by Ilaria Gianni, SmART, Rome, Italy 2018 Present Future, curated by Chloé Perrone, Juan Canela, Myriam Ben Salah, Artissima, Torino, Italy Inches, Feet, Verse, Metre, Ludovica Carbotta – Sara Enrico Marselleria, New York, US (NY Prize) 2017 Falsetto, Galleria Marta Cervera, Madrid, Spain Monowe, an interview, curated by Carlo Fossati, blank, Torino, Italia 2016 Monowe, Remnants from the future, produced by Gasworks (UK), Kiosko, Santa Cruz De La Sierra (Bolivia) Monowe / On, curated by Martina Angelotti, Public project, Bologna, Italia 2014 A motorway is a very strong wind, curated by Martina Angelotti, Care Of, Milano, Italy 2013 Ludovica non abita più qui, studio presentation in collaboration with Simone Menegoi, Via Settala, Milano Vitrine 270°, Ludovica Carbotta, curated by Stefano Collicelli Cagol, GAM, Torino, Italy 2011 Greater Torino. Ludovica Carbotta – Manuele Cerutti, curated by I. Calderoni, G. Bertolino, MT. Roberto, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Torino, Italy

2010 Contenuto ridotto, curated by Julia Trolp, NeroCuboProject, Rovereto, Trento, Italy Il viaggio è andato a meraviglia. Ludovica Carbotta,Chan Arte, Genova, Italy campo volo. Il viaggio è andato a meraviglia, curated by Carlo Fossati, blank, Torino, Italy 2009 Costruttore di mondi molto simili al nostro, Placentia Arte, Piacenza, Italy 2007 Different Sea?, curated by Claudio Cravero, SuPalatu, Villanova Monteleone Sassari, Italy Selected Group Exhibitions 2019 May You Live In Interesting Times curated by Ralph Rugoff, The 58th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia, Venice XV edition of Fotonoviembre, Myths of the Near Future, directed by Laura Valles Vílchez, Museum TEA, Tenerife Non-Places and the Spaces in Between curated by Ylinka Barotto, Italian Cultural Institute of New York, New York, US What’s Love Got to Do with It? Open Sessions 12, curated by Rosario Guiraldes and Lisa Sigal, The Drawing Center, New York, US Tercero Ato: o Verso, curated by Jéssica Varrichio and Guilherme Giufrida, Museu do Louvre Pau Brazyl, Sao Paolo, BR 2018 Future Ruins, curated by Davide Daninos, Palazzo Fortuny, Venice, Italy Te toca a ti, curated by Laura Vallés Vílchez, Espai d'art contemporani de Castelló, Spain a…is alter(ed): Open Sessions 12, curated by Rosario Guiraldes and Lisa Sigal, The Drawing Center, New York, US Ineditos 2018 Regreso al futuro, curated by Rafael Barber Cortell, La Casa Encendida, Madrid, Spain That’s IT, curated by Lorenzo Balbi, MAMBO, Bologna, Italy Open Studios, ISCP, New York, US Open Studios Jan Van Eyck Academy, Maastricht, NL 2017 Thinking Songs of Things, curated by Stefano Collicelli Cagol, 8th edition Curated by, Mario Mauroner Gallery, Wien Trigon 67/17, curated by Jürgen Dehm and Sandro Droschl, Künstlerhaus , Halle für Kunst & Medien, Graz A house, halfway, curated by Andrew de Brún, Inês Geraldes Cardoso, Kateryna Filyuk, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Torino, Italy 2016 Premio ITALIA - MAXXI 2016, curated by Giulia Ferracci, MAXXI Museum, Rome, Italy There is no place like home, curated by Stanislao Di Giugno, Giuseppe Pietroniro, Daniele Puppi, Marco Raparelli and Alessandro Cicoria, Houseboat Project, Rome, Italy Urban mining, rigenerazioni urbane, curated by Michele Dantini, Carolina Italiano, Adachiara Zevi, Emma Zanella, Alessandro Castiglioni, Lorena Giuranna e Alessio Schiavo, MAGA Gallarate (Milan), Italy If I were you, I’d call me Us, curated by Elisa Strinna and Elena Forin, Galleria Massimo De Luca, Mestre Venice, Italy Art Situacions, curated by Ilaria Gianni, Maria De Corral, Vicente Todolì and Lorena Martínez de Corral, Matadero Madrid, Espana 2015 Susy Culinski & friends, a project by Beatrice Marchi, Fanta Spazio, Milan, Italy Art Situacions, curated by Ilaria Gianni, Maria De Corral, Vicente Todolì and Lorena Martínez de Corral, Villa Croce Genova, Macro, Rome, Italy SPIN-OFF, Centro de Arte Contemporanea de Quito, Ecuador, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Ce l’ho, mi manca, Museo Mandralisca, Cefalù, Sicily, Italy Degree Show, MFA Goldsmiths University, London, UK Patientes Politicos, Espai Colona, Barcelona, Spain / Galeria Metropolitana, Santiago, Chile Cura, Camec, La Spezia, Italy

Grand Domestic Revolution curated by Martina Angelotti e Silvia Simoncelli, in collaboration with Casco - Office for Art, Design and Theory, Utrecht - Yolande van der Heide, Careof, Milan, Italy Arte in Memoria 8, curated by Adachiara Zevi, Sinagoga di Ostia Antica, Ostia, Roma, Italy 2014 Panta rei, tutto si trasforma curated by Federica Forti, Museo Civico del Marmo, Carrara, Italy DIVERSI MURI. UN OMAGGIO A N.O.F.4 - Oreste Fernando Nannetti, curated by Egija Inzule and Cesare Pietroiusti, Istituto Svizzero di Roma, Roma, Italy What’s cooking, curated by Anne Koskiluoma & Tanja Trampe, Museum Bärengasse / Gasthaus zum Bären, Zurich, Switzerland No music was playing, curated by Daniele Balit, Instants Chavirés, Montreuil, Paris, France Killing Floor, studio / A motorway is a very strong wind, curated by Carlo Fossati, blank - e/static, Torino, Italy Non potendomi arrampicare sulle nuvole, presi per le colline, curated by Eva Fabbris, Galleria Civica Valdagno, Vicenza, Italy 2013 Vitrine Alle radici della democrazia, curated by Stefano Collicelli Cagol, GAM Galleria Civica d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Torino, Italy Osmosis, a project by Luiss Master of Art, Stazione Tiburtina, Roma, Italy Artists' Film Club: Walking Sideways curated by Elsa Coustou, Lucia Garavaglia and Alana Kushnir, ICA, London, UK 2012 Young London, curated by Tara Cranswick, V22 The Biscuit Factory, London, UK Sotto la strada, la spiaggia, curated by Benoit Antille, Michele Fiedler, Andrey Parshikov, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Torino, Italy MA Fine Art 2012 Central Saint Martins INTERIM SHOW, V22 The Biscuit Factory, London, UK Take The Leap. Peep-Hole Annual Benefit, Peep Hole, Milan, Italy Neve chimica, curated by Lorenzo Balbi, organized by Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Casa Olimpia, Sestriere, Italy Silverstein annual, invited by Alberto Salvadori, Bruce Silverstein Gallery, New York, USA 2011 Aghilysti, Gum Studio, Artissima Lido, Torino, Italy Dublin Contemporary 2011, Terrible Beauty - Art, Crisis, Change & The Office of Non-Compliance curated by Jota Castro, Christian Viveros Fauné, Dublin, Ireland Ariane de Rothschild Prize 2011, Palazzo Reale, Milano, Italy Terre vulnerabili, curated by Chiara Bertola, Andrea Lissoni, Hangar Bicocca, Milano, Italy Emerging talents 2011,Centro di Cultura Contemporanea Strozzina (CCCS), Palazzo Strozzi, Firenze, Italy 2010 Argonauti,curated by Andrea Bruciati, ArtVerona, Verona, Italy Fort/Da, curated by Alis/Filliol, Cars, Omegna, Italy Il migliore dei mondi possibili, Conduits, Milano, Italy Un archivio storico: quattro interpretazioni, curated by Francesca Pagliuca, Unicredit Studio, Milano, Italy 21x21:21 artisti X il 21° secolo, curated by Francesco Bonami, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Torino, Italy Titolo grosso, Cripta 747, Torino, Italy 2009 Opening. Il Balletto dell’ Esperia incontre l’arte contemporanea curated by Lisa Parola, Cavallerizza Reale / Manica Corta, Torino, Italy 00 processo espositivo, Ludovica Carbotta – Alis/Filliol, Via Artisti, Torino, Italy Usine de reve, curated by Cecilia Casorati, Sabrina Vedovotto, 26 cc, Roma, Italy 2008 Public Improvisations, curated by Luca Cerizza, Anna Daneri, Fabbrica del Vapore, Milano, Italy Corso Aperto, curated by Luca Cerizza, Anna Daneri, Cesare Pietroiusti, Fondazione Ratti, Como, Italy No Location Relocation, curated by Milovan Farronato, A.T. Kearney, Milano, Italy Superfici Sconnesse, curated by Lisa Parola, Palazzo Barolo, Torino, Italy

Germinazioni - A new breed, curated by Norma Mangione, Chiara Canali, Alberto Zanchetta, Palazzo della Penna, Perugia, Italy 2007 Leap into the Void. Proposte XXII curated by a.titolo, Accademia Albertina Turin, Italy Residencies / Workshop 2018 New York Prize residency at ISCP, Brooklyn, NY 2017 Jan Van Eyck Academy, Maastricht (2017-2018) 2016 Gasworks International Fellowship, Triangle Network, Kiosko, Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia 2014 Database Carrara Residency program, curated by Federica Forti, Carrara, Italy Hommage to Nannetti, workshop run by Cesare Pietroiusti organized by Istituto Svizzero, Rome, Italy Academy of Asociality, Utopian Communities. Refusal, Participation and Anarchistic Practice run by Francis Cape, steirischer herbst, Graz, Austria But does it float? summer school curated by Margarida Mendes, The Barber Shop, Lisboa, Portugal FDV Residency Program, curated by Careof, Milan, Italy 2013 The Harder You Look curated by Nicoletta Lambertucci and Pieternel Vermoortel, David Roberts Art Foundation, London organised by Collecting Matters (DRAF, Kadist Art Foundation, Nomas Foundation) and CAHF (S.M.A.K, Mu.ZEE,M HKA&Middelheimmuseum), London, UK 2011-2012 Residency Central Saint Martins University, London - Ariane de Rothschild Prize 2011 (winner), UK 2008 Advanced Course in Visual Arts – Yona Friedman Visiting Professor, Fondazione Antonio Ratti, Como, Italy Workshop with Milovan Farronato Fondazione Spinola Banna per l’ Arte, Poirino, Italy Workshop with A Constructed World Greenwashing Fondazione Sandretto Rebaudengo, Torino, Italy Workshop with Tobias Rehberger Fondazione Spinola Banna per l’ Arte, Poirino, Italy 2007 Workshop Artelier, collaboration between artists and mental health patients, Il Bandolo, Torino, Italy Workshop with Stalker. Osservatorio Nomade. ProposteXXII, Torino, Italy 2005 Workshop with Alberto Garutti, Fondazione Spinola Banna per l’ Arte, Poirino, Italy Collective/Curatorial Projects 2017 The Institute of Things to Come, co-founded with Valerio Del Baglivo, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy www.theinstituteofthingstocome.com 2009 00 processo espositivo, exhibitions program, different venues, Torino, Italy 2007-2012 Founder of Progetto Diogene, since 2007. Progetto Diogene, a program of international residencies, workshops and projects experimental education and self-education, run by artists in the public space of Turin Italy. www.progettodiogene.eu 2011 Solid Void, editors: Gian Antonio Gilli and Roberto Cuoghi, Torino, Italy; curated by Progetto Diogene 2011 Guide Straordinarie by Progetto Diogene, Castello di Rivoli Museum, Italy; curated by Marcella Beccaria 2011 Saverio Adamo Tonoli “Selbstbildnis”, blank, Torino, Italy; curated by Progetto Diogene 2010 Solid Void, visiting professors: Gian Antonio Gilli and Giovanni Morbin, Torino, Italy; curated by Progetto Diogene 2010 Giovanni Morbin “Lid”, blank, Torino, Italy; curated by Progetto Diogene Talks and workshops conducted 2017 Chiribiri / Iribirihc, workshop, Fondazione Merz, Turin Piazza+, workshop on public art, Padova 2011

Le correzioni, workshop with Ludovica Carbotta and Manuele Cerutti, Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation, Torino, Italy DIOGENE VS DIOGENE, Galleria Franco Soffiantino, Torino, Italy Reading Room #10 PROGETTO DIOGENE, Nomas Foundation, Roma, Italy. Sentimento Nuevo invited by Antonio Grulli and Davide Ferri, Mambo, Bologna, Italy. Progetto Diogene with Ludovica Carbotta and Graham Hudson, Central Saint Martins, London, UK Arte e sfera pubblica –workshop curated by Pietro Gaglianò and Progetto Diogene, Teatro Studio, Scandicci, Firenze, Italy 2010 senza linea - come lavoro (ammesso che sia un lavoro) with Luca Bertolo, Alis/Filliol, Ludovica Carbotta, Festival Faenza, Faenza, Italy. 2009 Diogenebivaccourbano_ICEBERG GAP-Giovani per l’Arte PubblicaSpazio gAP, Bologna, Italy

LUDOVICA CARBOTTA · inerte, qué es sujeto y qué objeto. Recuerda esas islas misteriosas que al...

Documents

Transcript of LUDOVICA CARBOTTA · inerte, qué es sujeto y qué objeto. Recuerda esas islas misteriosas que al...