Nativity

Alessandro Agudio Giorgio Armani Alessandro Bava Mario Bellini Nathalie Du Pasquier Fausto Fantinuoli Ugo La Pietra Mario Milizia Daniele Milvio Salvo

Curated by Michele d' Aurizio

Preview and Brunch: March 7, 1-4PM Opening Reception: March 7, 6-9PM Extended Viewing: March 8, 12-6PM

“Nativity” is the reenactment of a memory. This show tests the potential of the exhibiting gesture—inherently assertive and factual—to return instead an absence, and thus explore the realm of the ghostly and unreal.

“Nativity” engages with the past through strategies like those of sampling in music. Indeed, unlike in reenacted exhibitions, in which the absence (of the original location, of the works) is configured as a ‘subtraction’ in the visitor’s experience (see “When Attitudes Become Form: Bern 1969/2013 Venice,” Fondazione Prada – Ca ‘Corner della Regina, Venice, 2013), music is exquisitely able to echo the past in the present. Tracks which are shaped by the sound of foregone days cannot simply be labeled as ‘re-processed memories’—i.e. reinterpretations, revisitations, remixes—; they are instead contemporary creations born with the purpose of stimulating anamnesis and regret: they transport the listener into a past which is extremely close to her own, while actually ‘mythical’ (see Burial, Rival Dealer, Hyperdub, 2013).

“Nativity” works like one of these music tracks: it doesn’t rebuild (reenact) a scenario through documentary sources, but creates a ‘folkloric’ one. In order to reach a compromise between the dichotomous factual and virtual, it makes use of the memory of a ‘somewhere’: a domestic space, a living room, in Italy. The living room is temporally situated between the second half of the 80s and the first half of the 90s. This chronology does not purport to indicate events that occurred at this juncture, but rather the identity of a lifestyle, and therefore an aesthetic understanding of the environment.

The space is furnished strictly according to the trends of Italian design from these years. Pastel colors dominate the space, especially cerulean, which is the color of the powder, and gray—or rather, greige, the hue that emerged out of Giorgio Armani’s creations. Traditional furniture and ceramic objects contrast with the icy and rationalist tones of the design objects. Ferns and other houseplants occupy the corners, while reproductions of Impressionists’ masterpieces hang on the walls. Natural light is never direct, but always filtered by thin curtains.

This living room belongs to a middle-class family, which here celebrates daily rituals, as well as rituals of great occasions. For example, during Christmas time, the room hosts a nativity scene: the sleek surface of the coffee table is hidden under a landscape of moss and papier-mâché, a blend of Middle Eastern pictorial clichés and a panorama of the Alps. The crib is installed in a corner, graciously watched over by the mother and father; gold, frankincense and myrrh are piously placed at its feet. A group of pilgrims are set on their way to honor the new born.