The Italian magazine Art a Part of Cult(ure) has just published my review of the exhibition “Sintattica”, featuring artists Luigi Battisti, claudioadami e Pasquale Polidori. The show was curated by Francesca Gallo at Museo Hendrik Christian Andersen.
Here is the link to the review
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I generally don’t like snarky – you’d rather build something than destroy something, right? At the same time, when I’m in the snarky mood, I go full on. And of course, when that happen, I really enjoy the bravado. Otherwise how would I earn the title of contemporary art super-villain? Like in this piece for the Sunday Times of Malta, for which I love to put a desecrator of contemporary art attitude. You might say, making fun of contemporary art is way too easy, but I can’t help it; sometimes you just walk in an exhibition and you start rubbing your hands!
“In a constant relating western and eastern art, Naima dissects and offers interesting models that make legible the ‘new’ culture even to those who aren’t introduced to it”
Arts writer and curator Maila Buglioni has written a very interesting review about my book “Arte Contemporanea in Indonesia, un’introduzione” for the webmagazine Artnoise. Check it out here (in Italian).
Picture above: Pinkswing Park, Collaboration work for CP Biennale by Agus Suwage and Davy Linggar, 2006. Courtesy of Tyler Rollins Fine Art.
Some time ago a friend of mine – Bietolone we will call him – told me that he was waiting at the clinic of venereal diseases in London (a banal candida, he quickly added). In the waiting room a tall slim bombshell from Russia struck up a conversation. She said she was sick of London and she wanted to move elsewhere. Like, in that very moment. She explained she was a sculptor, and England was no place to live for an artist anymore. When he heard that Bietolone gulped. He notoriously had a soft spot for artists. He would have already asked her out if only they wouldn’t have met at the clinic of venereal diseases.
She proclaimed that the future for the arts was in Asia, and she had already picked a city to live: Singapore. She threw her blonde hair behind her shoulders and asked Bietolone in a heavily accented English: “Do you want to come with me?”
“Let me think about it” he replied seriously.
She scribbled her number on a piece of paper, gave it to him and disappeared in the stairwell before even getting her diagnosis.
The Times of Malta has just published my article on Shaun Gladwell’s performance featuring BMX champion Matti Hemmings at Artissima Art Fair in Turin.
“It was actually quite enjoyable to see Shaun Gladwell’s high-brow/low-brow performance. I liked this idea that art is made to be used and experienced. I started imagining Shaun sitting in a pub with Hemmings, bouncing off ideas before a beer. ‘Man, let’s climb the Mont Blanc, let’s spend the whole winter in Brazil, let’s make a performance with you riding Duchamp’s Bicycle Wheel. And let’s make that pretentious crowd at Artissima watch it!’ ”
Here’s the link to the online version of the magazine
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Here are some of my highlights from the Artissima art fair in Turin which I attended last week with my colleague Roberto D’Onorio (here’s his take)!
My article focuses on Artissima’s Per4m section and has just been published on the Australian and UK version of the web-magazine ArtsHub with the title: “Art Fair gives space to the anti-market”.
Here’s the link to the article on ArtsHub website
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I don’t now if your grandmother ever had a garden, and in that garden she used to keep palms, bamboos and other tropical plants. Imagine yourself sitting in a corner of the porch after a good grandma-style lunch. The November sun behind the vegetation transforms the leaves into mysterious green neon lights and makes the bark of threes shine like silver. You may call it a Sunday afternoon enchantment, you may call it Refulgenzia. In that moment you can even expect a tiger jumping out from behind a terracotta pot – which of course, now looks like a column from some Bengalese temple. It’s the exact same feeling that Paolo Conte – the Italian musician – so well depicted in his song Azzurro: “Cerco un pò d’Africa in giardino, tra l’oleandro e il baobab” (“I’m looking for a bit of Africa in my garden, between the oleander and the baobab”). It’s about looking for the exotic in the familiar and the familiar in the exotic. In contemporary art not many artists are able to convey that. Oreste Zevola does it.
The Italian web magazine Art a Part of Cult(ure) has just published my review of SHOUT! Indonesian Contemporary Art at MACRO, Rome (you might remember the preview of the show I posted few weeks ago).
SHOUT! definitely challenges any exoticist idea people can have of contemporary art in Indonesia. It shows a range of extremely original points of view on universal issues, from the most personal expressions to global themes. It has been great to take part in this project and really good fun hanging around with the artists!
The Times of Malta has just published my review of Marina Abramovic’s 512 Hours performance at the Serpentine Gallery, London.
I’m very happy to have the article published on the leading Malta’s newspaper, because that is where my favourite comic book character Corto Maltese is from!
“When being tucked in for the last time as a kid – I must have been five years old or thereabouts – I couldn’t have imagined the next person to pop me under the bed sheets fondly would be one of the most famous performers in contemporary art: Marina Abramovich…”
Here’s the link to the online version of the magazine
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The Italian magazine Art a Part of Cult(ure) has just published my review of Dario Carratta’s exhibition “Attività Alpha” alla Galleria 291 est, Roma
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The Italian magazine Art a Part of Cult(ure) has just published my review of Ana Gloria Salvia’s exhibition “Archi_Cuba” at PAN, Naples
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The Italian magazine Art a Part of Cult(ure) has just published my review of Shi Xinning’s exhibition “Idea or Event” at Primo Marella Gallery, Milan.
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Naima Morelli is an arts writer and journalist specialized in contemporary art from Asia-Pacific and the MENA region.
She has written for the Financial Times, Al-Jazeera, The Art Newspaper, ArtAsiaPacific, Internazionale and Il Manifesto, among others, and she is a regular contributor to Plural Art Mag, Middle East Monitor and Middle East Eye as well as writing curatorial texts for galleries.
She is the author of three books on Southeast Asian contemporary art.
Reach out: contact [at] naimamorelli.com
