FIGHTING WORDS

With the first personal exhibition in the Milan spaces of the gallery, on March 22, 2022, Prometeo Gallery Ida Pisani starts a collaboration with Silvia Giambrone (Agrigento, 1981).

Already in the title, the exhibition declares its combative and resilient character: Fighting Words. Silvia Giambrone is indeed an artist and a feminist militant, who explores the minefield of abuse and domestic violence with her work. By using various means of expression, including video, performance, photography, embroidery and sculpture, Giambrone investigates the addiction to violence understood as the distortion of an apparently immutable family ritual, «something so internal to the fabric of life that cannot be more recognized as such», Paola Ugolini writes in her critical text.

It is the very fabric, the soft, warm and reassuring one of some cradle covers, in soft colors, that was chosen by the artist as the preferred material for some of the works on display. «The Security Blankets - writes Paola Ugolini - are elegant pink cotton crib blankets, decorated with the characters of Alice in Wonderland, but embroidered with phrases taken from a survival manual in which techniques are taught to being able to stop a sexual assault. The embroideries of the instructions to fight/survive violate the innocence of the nursery and carry out a conceptual operation of brutal unmasking of the taboo that limits sexual violence to silence; through this way, this unmasking is also transformed into a warning for future generations».

Starting from what Natalia Ginzburg would define as a Family lexicon, with more marked disparities here among the members of the household, Giambrone breaks the taboo that often hovers over violence within the walls of home. Her works unveil the intrinsic mechanisms of such abuses, based on an affective and relational grammar that today's society takes for granted, to which one is addicted to the point of no longer being able to recognize patriarchy and imbalances of power as overbearing, ending up accepting wickedness.

Moreover, the video TRAUM is on display. It arises, according to Ugolini, "from the point of view of those who have survived the abuse, of those who have been in the position of the victim and find themselves reliving the experience through the story”. In fact, in the video Silvia Giambrone reads, in a detached way and with a monotone voice, a list of points listed on a thin sheet of ceramic. After a pause, the sheet is dropped to the floor, breaking, with the unmistakable sound of a fragile material that shatters, recording the "reality" of the trauma, and, through the performative nature of the work, transforming it into a collective event at the same time both painful and liberating, which cannot be denied.

On display, in addition to installation works and Lightbox, there is also a small artifact that acts as a conceptual counterpoint to the other works. It is a divination card on which a rose is depicted: according to the ancient tradition of secrecy of the Sub Rosa Tacita Dicta (expression extrapolated from the Latin phrase sub rosa dicta velata est, that is “what one says under the rose what one cannot be reveal ") this flower symbolizes the bright and positive side of silence. In ancient times, the rose was the flower dedicated to the Egyptian god Horus, renamed by the Romans Harpocrates, the divinity of secrecy and silence, keeper of secrets. Therefore, when a rose was placed on a table, those present were obliged not to divulge what had been said or heard. Since then, the expression sub rosa indicates something that is said or done in secret, in confidence. "The sacredness of silence –closes Ugolini– is therefore conceptually linked by Silvia Giambrone to that core of resilience that everyone has within themselves, that hard core that cannot be affected by external agents and that allows humanity to move forward despite the horror”.

Biography

Silvia Giambrone was born in 1981 in Agrigento. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome (2002- 2006). She has held residencies throughout Europe and USA and been awarded several prizes over the past five years. She has recently been awarded the VAF prize, the most important prize for young Italian artists. Giambrone, who both lives and works between Rome and London, works about both the physical and invisible evidences of the strong connection between violence ad the ‘subjectification’ process. 

Some of her exhibitions include: Pandora's Boxes, CCCB Museum, Madrid (2009); Eurasia, Mart Museum, Rovereto (2009); Moscow Biennale: Qui vive? (2010); Flyers, Oncena Biennal de la Havana (2012); Re-Generation, Macro Museum, Rome (2012); Mediterranea 16 (2013); Let it go, American Academy in Rome (2013); Critica in arte, MAR Museum, Ravenna (2014); Ciò che non siamo, ciò che non vogliamo, MAG Museum, Riva del Garda (2014); A terrible love of war, Kaunas Bienale, Lithuania (2015); ‘Suite Rivolta’, Museu de Electricidade, Doclisboa’s Passages, Lisboa (2015); Every passion borders on the chaotic, Villa Croce Museum, Genoa (2016); W Women in Italian Design, Triennale Design Museum, Milan (2016); Archeologia domestica Vol. I, IIC, Köln (2016); Time is out of Joint, La Galleria Nazionale, Rome (2017); Corpo a corpo, La Galleria Nazionale, Rome (2017); Terra mediterranea: in action, NiMAC, Nicosia, Cyprus (2017); Il corpo è un indumento fragile, Museo del 900, Florence (2018); Young Italians 1968 – 2018, Italian Institute of Culture, New York City (2018); SHE DEVIL Remix, Pecci Museum, Prato (2018); Vaf Prize, Museo d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto, Vaf Foundation (2019); Wall-eyes. Looking at Italy and Africa, Keynes Art Mile, Johannesburg (2019); Wall- eyes. Looking at Italy and Africa, Cape Town (2019); Donne. Corpo e immagine tra simbolo e rivoluzione, Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Rome (2019); VII Premio Fondazione VAF, Stadtgalerie Kiel, Germany (2019); Italia. I racconti (in)visibli, Gyumri, Armenia, Styles Regional Gallery (2019); Italia. I racconti (in)visibli, Santiago del Cile, Museo Cultural Las Condes, Cile (2019); Feminism in Italian contemporary art, Richard Saltoun Gallery, London (2019); Sovvertimenti, Museo Novecento, Florence (2019); Nobody’s room. Anzi, parla, Museo del Novecento, Milan (2020); I say I, La Galleria Nazionale, Rome (2021); Hall of Shadows, commissioned by Mariagrazia Chiuri for Dior show FW2021, Versailles Castle, France (2021); Reclaiming and Making: Art, Desire, Violence, Museum Of Sex, New York (2021); Mascarilla 19 – Codes of domestic violence, LOOP Festival, Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona, Spain (2021); Orizzonti del Corpo, Palazzo da Mosto, Reggio Emilia, Italy (2021); Reclaiming and Making: Art, Desire, Violence, Museum Of Sex, New York, NY (2022). 

She works with Richard Saltoun Gallery in London, Stefania Miscetti Studio in Rome, Prometeo Gallery in Milan.

INFO:

Silvia Giambrone
Fighting Words
23.03.2022 - 06.05.2022
Critical text by Paola Ugolini
Opening: 22.03.2022, from 6pm to 9pm

Free admission with Green Pass

Prometeo gallery Ida Pisani
Via Privata G. Ventura 6, Milano
Info: tel. +39 02 83538236 - info@prometeogallery.com

Prometeo Gallery reminds you that it is mandatory to wear a mask for the entire duration of the event and to maintain social distancing. Body temperature will be measured at the entrance, and if it exceeds 37.5 °, access will not be allowed.