Versus Inversus

Opening: Tuesday November 25th 2008 h.18.30-22.30

Raffaella Cortese is pleased to announce the group show “Versus Inversus” in which five artists will exhibit the work for the first time in Italy .

As Gabri Scardi writes in the introduction, the show “gathers works by five artists who were born and raised in different places and times: Ana Mendieta, Anna Maria Maiolino, Martha Rosler, Zoe Leonard, Joan Jonas. The works belong to different moments of their careers. Coincidences, similarities emerging within autonomous and different paths. Identical and opposite, analogies and connections, but also discrepancies; in their differences they share the capability to keep two issues together: the red thread of individual experience and the aspiration to totality and universality”. Joan Jonas (New York,1936), performer, videomaker, was invited as Visiting Professor at the Ratti Foundation in Como last year . In her work, fragments of everyday life and symbols of different cultures, which are personally experienced, are collected, revisited, represented in the form of subjective rituals. On show some drawings realized in different years and one of her most famous video-installation My new Theatre VI, Good Morning Good Night ’06. Martha Rosler (Brooklyn, NY, 1943), belongs to a following generation. She is an artist, essayist, intellectual who has always conceived art as the expression of a strongly characterized political militancy and her camera as ironic and fierce glance on our everyday life and on the images of society which we are, often unconsciously, used to. Also Zoe Leonard (Liberty, NY, 1961) is interested on globalization issues while proposing her recent works from the Analogue series, exhibited at the last edition of Documenta, and several images from her first works. Her important solo show at Madrid's Reina Sofia is due to open soon. Anna Maria Maiolino (Scalea, 1942), although little-known in Italy, was born in Calabria but has always lived in Brasil. During her long career she investigated issues linked with birth and life. Videos, performances, photos focusing on female bodies, eggs and earth. Ana Mendieta (Cuba, 1948), who died prematurely in 1985, belongs to Maiolino and Rosler's generation. Her poetics has deep connections with earth and with the traces of her body left after her performances. On show vintage works, videos and some drawings which are representative of her entire artistic production.

Versus Inversus

Künstler: Joan Jonas, Zoe Leonard, Anna Maria Maiolino, Ana Mendieta, Martha Rosler