Bulletin #24. Inscriptions by Cecilia Canziani
Bulletin #24
Inscriptions
by Cecilia Canziani (ENG – ITA)
An essay on the artwork of Ivana Spinelli, published on the occasion of her solo show Contropelo at Gallleriapiù, Bologna (January 23 – March 28, 2020).
A year ago, I visited Ivana Spinelli in her studio. As we had been planning for a while, we went through her body of work, looked at finished, unfinished, almost finished pieces, and discussed her latest exhibition. Then we talked about books, and I think that was the moment when she grabbed a folder from a shelf that was filled with exercises – writing exercises.
– Cecilia Canziani
About the author:
Cecilia Canziani is an independent curator and art historian.
About the artist:
Ivana Spinelli (Ascoli Piceno, 1972; lives and works between Berlin and Bologna) is an Italian artist and Sculpture lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna. Her twenty-year practice mainly analyzes the relationship between body and language, and their ability to continuously shift the limits of perception and reality by defining each other. In her work, she addresses the social and political dimensions of personal relationships, as well as the everlasting conflict between the normativity of legislative language, brands and social media on the one side, and the vitality of world protests and re-appropriation on the other. The strict definition of terms like clandestine, feminine, terrorist, vegetal and minimum is expanded by actions such as sawing, wearing, translating, and voicing – which are often shared by participants in performances and workshops. Currently, her work is showcased in the solo show Contropelo at GALLLERIAPIÙ, Bologna and in the group show Scrivere Disegnando – When Language Seeks Its Other, Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève; later in 2020, it will be featured in the group exhibition Io dico io – I say I at La Galleria Nazionale, Rome. Selected international exhibitions from the past are: Zig Zag Protofilosofia, Una Vetrina, Rome; Minimum:Voci, Museo Barracco, Rome; Minimum, GALLLERIAPIÙ, Bologna; 5th Mediations Biennale, Poznań, Poland; Il sangue delle donne, Casa Internazionale delle Donne, Rome; Exploring Resilience, Mila Kunstgalerie, Berlin; Progetto Italiano n. 3 – Avere fame di vento, The Workbench, Milan; Topophilias, Kreuzberg Pavillon, Berlin; Baustelle, BeoProject, Belgrade; Art Goes City, Postaja Raumau, Slovenj Gradec; Embedded art, Akademie der Künste, Berlin; Global Sisters, Italian Academy of New York. She was in the program Grand Tour d’Italie (Mibact 2019) and won the 2019 Replica Prize for artist books and the 2005 New York Prize. Her work has been analyzed in several essays and catalogues, such as Das Image des Terrorismus im Kunstsytstem (Sebastian Baden, Edition Metzel, 2018), Global Fight Club (Matthias Reichelt, Distillery, 2011), Caos #2 (Raffaele Gavarro, San Servolo, 2010), and The Aesthetics of Terror (Manon Slome and Joshua Simon, Charta, 2009). Her work was also published in the exhibition catalog Global Sisters –The Contradictions of Love (Revolver Books, 2012) and in the artist book Minimum (2017).
