It Occurs to Me that I Am America @ Italian Cultural Institute New York

Arianna Carossa’s installation at the Italian Cultural Institute of New York

“The exhibition aims at investigating the relationship that Italian artists and curators have with the city of New York and its art scene. During our first meetings, our question was: how are we affected by coming from a strong culture like the Italian one and having to deal with another strong, and in some ways opposite, culture like the American one? And how do these differences and similarities emerge in the practice of artists who are building their career in New York? As a starting point, we used a poem from one of the greatest American poets, Allen Ginsberg, because his point of view on America challenged the same idea we were questioning: the myth of a perfect land where dreams come true and opportunities are around the corner. At the same time, what we found extremely contemporary is the way in which we, the foreigners, are deeply embedded in the social fabric of this country, yet not completely a part of it. America is and will always be a land of immigrants, yet today politicians speak about nationalism and making this country “great again.”  From here, the title It Occurs to Me That I Am America, so as to express that we’re all part of America, that we’re influenced by its culture and at the same time we influence it. That’s why we decided to choose a highly diversified group of artists, even though we knew that would have made the exhibition more challenging. We wanted to express the diversification of our time, how different styles and approaches to the same concept of art can carry the same message, and also how diversified the Italian panorama of emerging artists is.”

– words by Ludovica Capobianco, curator

It Occurs to Me that I Am America
Italian Cultural Institute, 686 Park Avenue, New York
Until July 8^th, 2016

Curators: Ludovica Capobianco, Alessandro Facente, Veronica Santi, Giulia Trabaldo Togna

Artists: Matteo Callegari, Arianna Carossa, Danilo Correale, Renato d’Agostin, Alessandro Del Pero, Andrea Mastrovito, Maria Domenica Rapicavoli, Gian Maria Tosatti