I have a growing interest for Marocco and the way contemporary art is developing in this country. This time I discussed the emerging art scene with curator, artist and gallerist Yasmine Laraqui founder of Dasthe Art Space and Agency in Casablanca for Middle East Monitor.
Here is the link to the interview
Read More
Another interview with a super-interesting Khmer artist has been published on CoBo, as part of my reportage on contemporary art in Cambodia. For this piece I spoke with Kanitha Tith, one of the young, emerging voices in the artistic landscape, who is gaining more and more recognition internationally.
In the article she tell about her creative process and what it means to be a multi-passionate creative in Phnom Penh.
Here is the link to the interview
Read More
Every time a new article of mine gets published, I’m always so happy and grateful to have a job that allows me to make great discoveries and dwell on great art. That was certainly the case with this piece: “Five Emerging Indonesian Artists”, which has just been published on the webmagazine CoBo.
But of course, nothing comes without challenges. It wasn’t easy to limit myself to just five artists (or collectives, or duos), and of course I wanted to go beyond the most obvious names that would tick the “emerging” box. On top of that, I tried to get a good ratio of women artists, that often don’t get enough press for a number of reason (I talk about that in another piece) – and yet they create amazing work. So here my version of the top five emerging Indonesian artists! Let me know what do you think, I’m happy to expand on this list in the future!
Here’s the link to the piece
_
My series on studio visits is finally back! During my reportage in Singapore I had the chance to snoop around the working and sometimes also living space of local artists. First up is a wonderful Italian artist who now calls the Lion City home: Giada Tagliamonte aka Zada Tagli. Her work is delicate and poetic, and although she’s inspired by eminent figures of Italian culture, such as Giotto and Umberto Eco, the imaginary she evokes is really universal. You will soon read my interview to her, which I realized in November – but for now I’ll let the images speak for themselves.
The other day, waiting for the tram, I was lazily browsing through a lifestyle magazine. An ad captured my attention. It said: ‘Don’t you deserve a job you love?’ In the corner of the page was the name of the graphic design school that would ostensibly make such a job possible. The tram arrived. ‘We all want a job we love’, I was thinking (seated next to the typical Melburnian drunk vomiting on the floor) but it feels like it’s the first time in history we can actually think of deserving that luxury. It’s no mystery why; in the last decade, the number of people working in the arts (or associated creative professions) has increased at a much higher rate than general employment. A creative and fulfilling job is one of the great aspirations of the post-Baby Boomer generations.
In the healthy Australian economy this desire does not seem so outlandish, unlike in Europe where, in these times of economic crisis, you are lucky to have a job of any kind. In Australia more and more people are actually working, or studying to work, in the arts industry. Just looking at the people in the tram, aside from the amiable drunkard, everyone under the age of thirty seemed to exude some kind of creative attitude. The pink-haired girl in front of me held a folder of drawings. Two hippie friends near the door carried guitar cases. And a guy at the back of the tram seemed to not have paid his travel fare – which in my Italian hometown is a form of art as well, especially if you manage to not get caught.
Read More
My interview with Aussie artist Alasdair McLuckie has just been published on Trouble Magazine with the title “Modernism on Gertrude”. The interview is part of my reportage about emerging artists in Melbourne and it’s my eighth feature on Trouble!
Here the link to the interview
Here the link to the online version of the magazine
Read More
Si è da poco conclusa la mostra con mia curatela “Nothing’s happened since Yesterday – Due artisti da Melbourne” di Georgina Lee e Kenny Pittock alla Galleria 291est, Roma. Se non avete avuto modo di visitarla ma siete curiosi di sapere di che si trattava, ecco il mio testo critico a corredo della mostra, più una galleria di immagini:
“Paesi geograficamente lontani da noi come l’Australia suscitano suggestioni diverse che dicono molto non tanto del paese stesso, quanto della persona interpellata.
Per alcuni all’Australia si associa all’esodo in corso della gioventù italiana in cerca di prospettive lavorative. Sono infatti sempre di più coloro disposti ad affrontare più di 24 ore di volo e un cambio radicale per sistemarsi in quella che è vista come la nuova America. Per loro l’Australia sarebbe tutta percentuali di disoccupazione bassissime, clima amichevole e qualità della vita alta; almeno secondo le statistiche. Per altri invece Australia vuol dire esclusivamente spiagge sconfinate popolate da biondi surfisti abbronzati. Altri non penseranno altro che ai coccodrilli e ai cappelli di pelle a falda larga con i dentini di alligatore (ne ho uno e sono indecisa se indossarlo all’opening di questa mostra o meno, giusto per il gusto di farmi accoltellare dai due artisti indignati per lo stereotipo).
For the “Nothing happened since yesterday – Due Artisti da Melbourne” exhibition, I organized a talk at Accademia di Belle Arti Roma – aka Rome’s Art Academy – with the two exhibiting artists.
The talk was hosted by Prof. Isabella Tirelli and was meant to fuel a discussion with the students about the path of artists after art school. I thought that the experience of Kenny Pittock and Georgina Lee could have been interesting for the students. To start as emerging artist in Melbourne is certainly easier in Rome, thanks also to a very tight community and the presence of artist-run space. I hoped that by comparing the Australian art system to the Italian one, the students could have been inspired and come with new ideas for their own art environment.
I started the talk by introducing the Australian context and my research on the Melbourne art scene. Then Kenny and Georgina went on talking about their own work.
I’m happy about the outcome of the talk. Some students asked about the conceptual process of making work, some others inquired about how an Italian artist could start exhibiting in Australia. Georgina replied very clearly to all the questions and Kenny made even the more impassible students laugh. A student called Francesco even made a drawing of Georgina and Kenny and gave to them as a gift!
I feel like the curator’s job is a little like Charles Xavier’s at times. After all both the curator and Prof. Xavier go around the world gathering mutants with superpowers – or artists in my case. My team for the “Nothing’s has happened since Yesterday” exhibition is sure smaller than a Marvel one but by no means less powerful.
One day, surfing on the internet, I stumbled upon a blog which reviewed exhibitions in Australia. It was when I was researching about the art scene in Melbourne, so I send a mail to the website asking for an interview with one of the two authors. At table of a cafe, waiting to be interviewed, sat a petite girl with resolute manners, nervous nostrils and round glasses. She was called Georgina Lee and chatting with her I found out that she was not only an arts writer, but also an artist.
Few weeks later I visited the TCB art space with a friend, and we were greeted by a gallery sitter with curly dusty hair and a worn out jumper. “I’ll give you guys a tour”, he mumbled and he started to list the names of the artists exhibiting, gesticulating with the hands in his jumper’s front pocket. One sculpture hanged on the wall looked like something that I had seen in exhibition at the Perth Centre for Contemporary Art a short time before. “Oh… that’s my work”, he said quickly and shyly. That’s how I met Kenny Pittock.
After visiting Dario Carratta’s pen-drawings exhibition at Galleria 291est in Rome, I was totally curious to see his paintings. On the way to his studio in Conca D’Oro, a north-east suburb of Rome, I was wondering where his twisted world of dingy nightclubs, pulped faces and blue hair in the wind came from. I won’t say I was expecting to find corpses and carnivorous plants in Dario’s studio, but I was actually pretty surprised to hear that the artists was so sensitive to bad vibes he wouldn’t even see the news. He explained me that art for him was an outlet to negative emotions that would otherwise overwhelm him. That’s why he needed to paint every day and he couldn’t picture himself not doing it.
The paintings in flesh looked much more violent and rougher than what I could observe from the photos, but for this very reason even more exciting and fascinating.
It’s Easter holidays and instead of camping and picnicking in random green spots in Sorrento, as it’s tradition over here, I’m working on a new book.
This will be a narrative essay about the challenges of being a young artist. The setting is Melbourne, Australia, but the book will be a snapshot of a moment of an artist’s career all over the world.
This book has a lighter tone compared to my Indonesian one (which is now going through the editing process in case you were wondering). With the Indonesian book I had to tackle pretty serious themes, since the country’s history has been pretty turbulent; while younger artists are lured by an often misleading market, established artists have to come to terms with the country’s political and social issues. Years of colonialism, dictatorship and struggles have very deeply influenced the contemporary artists in Indonesia.
Australia didn’t have that on a superficial level. The tragedies concerning Indigenous Australians or the aggressive Australian policies towards migrants – to name just two – don’t really register as their own to young, mostly white, Australians.
The focus of my book will still be contemporary art in relation with its context, but this time I want to be more personal. How to get a living when you have always thought that everything you would have to do in life was art? I heard this question by many of my artist friends and I also asked it to myself more than once.
The Melbournian system and the Australian way have some answers, but they pose also some new challenges. In this book I will give my take on the problem through my experience and the 40 voices of people I’ve interviewed in Australia. I’m interested in showing the good sides of the ecosystem in Melbourne and explaining how that could be beneficial for an artist who is interested in having a career.
ITA:
Il giovane artista Robberto è recentemente tornato da Los Angeles dove ha esposto nella galleria Madhood Temporary (qui il mio comunicato stampa).
Una settimana fa ci siamo incontrati su sua richiesta al Verano, uno dei cimiteri più belli di Roma – almeno credo, non sono un’esperta in materia – e abbiamo chiacchierato riguardo l’esperienza dell’artista a LA, le opere realizzate lì, il mondo dell’arte americano a confronto con quello italiano e così via.
Sono stata a lungo combattuta sul pubblicare o meno sul mio blog l’audiointervista nella sua interezza. Sebbene mi trovi d’accordo sul disappunto e la disillusione di Robberto riguardo al mondo dell’arte italiano, mi piacerebbe essere comunque portatrice di una visione ottimista.
Nell’intervista però si trovano anche dei momenti di grande afflato e bellezza dove Robberto parla con passione della propria arte e di come, nonostante le difficoltà, non possa rinunciarci. Siccome gli artisti non vanno censurati, sopratutto quelli che si esprimono rispetto ad una condizione condivisa, ecco Robberto in tutta la sua incazzatura.
EN:
Italian emerging artist Robberto is back from Los Angeles where he recently had an exhibition called “Fake Skin” at Madhood Temporary (here my press release).
A week ago he asked me to meet at the Verano, Rome’s biggest and the most beautiful cemetery I suppose – I’m not an expert of cemeteries so I can’t make comparisons- and we had a conversation about his experience in LA, the US art world vs the Italian one, his art and so forth.
Until the last minute I didn’t know if I wanted to post the entire audio record on my blog or not. Robberto turned out to have a very disillusioned and bitter opinion of the Italian art world and, even if I share his concerns, I would rather have an optimistic attitude.
Then I thought about the parts of the interview where he talks about the joy and the inevitability of art making, and I thought that could be very inspiring.
I don’t really feel I should censure artists, so I decided to post the interview, unfortunately available only in Italian.
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
