Polychrome terracotta, gres enameled with plant ash, soil and sand from Val Gardena, dry vegetal, candles
155 x 166 x 145 cm
Dimensions variable
[Photo: Agostino Osio. Courtesy the artist; SpazioA, Pistoia, and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan]
Chiara Camoni’s research focuses on natural, geological processes, sedimentation and implicit waiting in the natural world, as well as on the relational dimension between the human being and nature, for a reflection on what we might describe as an ecology of co-existence.
The sculpture titled Sister is part of the eponymous series made up of large kneeling or seated figures made from natural terracotta, and consisting of small elements in a chain in which the fingerprints that shaped them are visible. They can have colored flowers that germinate from the head and branches as prostheses or as scepters. They are also laden with all sorts of element, from masses of tangled wires to bric-a-brac, to small objects with an apotropaic appearance. Assertive or ironic each time, characterized by two faces or many eyes, or lit by multicolored candlelight, with a smile that is just hinted at, the works are disturbing and hermetic in their interweaving of the archaic and the cultural, the magic and the domestic, the confidential and the obscure. Supportive figures but never docile, the catalyzers instead of an ambivalent energy: accomplices, probably, for better or for worse. Amidst grafts of branches simulating the arts, and the additions of flowers delineating a trail, the impression is that of an arcane, plural, iridescent nature, of which the human being is just one of the actors who contributes to creating them and inside which they co-exist and co-act.
Chiara Camoni lives in Fabbiano, in Alta Versilia. After graduating in Sculpture from the Brera Fine Arts Academy, for several years she worked for the Diffusione delle Scienze Naturali in Naples. Along with other artists she founded Magra – Museo d’Arte contemporanea in Granara. With Cecilia Canziani she is developing a cycle of seminars titled La Giusta Misura, initiated at the Murate Progetti Arte Contemporanea in Florence.
The artist has had many solo and groups shows in major exhibition venues both in Italy and abroad, including: Magazin des Horizons, Grenoble, France; Gallerie d’Italia, Milan; MIMA, Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, Middlesbrough; Palazzo da Mosto, Reggio Emilia; Museo Novecento, Florence; Museo della Ceramica di Montelupo, Montelupo Fiorentino; Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan.