Quasi nessuno, 2023 upcoming After the success of Margherita Raso’s first artistic intervention inside the bell tower of the church of Santa Maria in the abbey of Lucedio in the municipality of Trino Vercellese, Aptitudeforthearts – an art initiative started in 2021 on the territory to enhance the material and intangible cultural heritage of Vercelli – announces for the 2022-2023 season a new project by the Italian designer and artist Matilde Cassani. In its desire to support female artistic research, Aptitudeforthearts invites artists of different generations and backgrounds to reflect on the landscape of the rice paddies and to imagine an intervention freely inspired by its stories. Whilst Margherita Raso realised a project that was confronted with the atmosphere of the Cistercian Abbey of Santa Maria di Lucedio, shaping the space through fabric, sculptural works and a sound installation, the intervention of Matilde Cassani – whose research in all those years works on the border between architecture, installations and performance – will focus on the fields of Vercelli rice paddies, emphasizing the narrative and ritual dimension of a magical and mysterious territory. Within this changing landscape, Matilde Cassani, chosen as the protagonist of the second edition of the project. has dreamed of seeing a company of scarecrows appear here and there. The project is made possible thanks to the support of the MUNICIPALITY OF TRINO (VC) and with the renewed and generous contribution of AZIENDA AGRICOLA PRINCIPATO DI LUCEDIO.
Exhibition: Quasi Nessuno Design: Matilde Cassani Studio (Matilde Cassani, Leonardo Gatti, Cecilia Da Pozzo) Curator: Paola Nicolin For: Aptitudeforthearts
Curated by artist, poet and performer Mirella Bentivoglio, the exhibition Materializzazione del linguaggio opened on 20 September 1978 at the Magazzini del Sale alle Zattere on the occasion of the 38. Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte della Biennale di Venezia. The exhibition comprised a selection of heterogeneous materials and practices reifying a more ample reflection on the ‘relationship between women and language’. A language was thus coined that was an expression of the ‘unconditioned and transgressive’ characteristic of the verbal-visual research of 90 international female artists and poets active at the time. Poetic expression and critical awareness unfolded in opposition to patriarchal languages and took the form of visual and textual works, including poetry and prose books, artist’s books, embroideries, live performances, videos, drawings, graphics, notes, scribbles, sheets and papers. In so far as the show included images of self-representation, traces of memory and performing bodies, it acted as a "reconnaissance", a "census" and an "archive" at once. In so doing, the exhibition blurred the divide between the work and the document, between the three-dimensionality of the exhibition and the two dimensionality of the publication, between the verticality of the museum wall and the horizontality of the archival showcase. Re-Materialization of Language. 1978-2022 - the first group exhibition organized by the Antonio Dalle Nogare Foundation – is conceived as a first attempt at a philological reconstruction of the original exhibition. A re-activation and re-contextualization of the original historical instances takes place for the centenary of Bentivoglio’s birth. The exhibition’s display, based on the alphabetical taxonomy of an archive, could be considered as the starting point for imagining, creating and sharing further alphabets and therefore additional narratives, which will involve thevisitors too. Moreover, the matrix of the alphabet is the one which all the artists in the show use as a starting point in their works as well, in order to own it, subvert it and re-found it. The original exhibition will periodically and progressively re-materialized by the interventions of three contemporary female artists — Monica Bonvicini (Venice, 1965), BRACHA (Bracha L. Ettinger, Tel Aviv, 1948) and Nora Turato (Zagreb, 1991) — and a series of digital and live events.
Exhibition: Re-Materialization of Language. 1978-2022 Curator: Cristiana Perrella, Andrea Viliani with Vittoria Pavesi Design: Matilde Cassani Studio (Matilde Cassani, Leonardo Gatti, Cecilia Da Pozzo) Location: Fondazione Antonio dalle Nogare Photos: Jurgen Eheim Fotostudio
The Campeggi pavilion is an enormous drying rack on which a series of fabric silhouettes hang, just like in Venice. The historical forms of the entire collection can be observed in a succession of perspectives. The longer side displays the clothes hanging sideways and is formally rigorous. The shorter side reveals a perspective breakthrough, typical of theatrical wings. A landscape of ideas hanging under the sun.
Stendino Campeggi, 2022 Exhibition: Stand Campeggi designs Design: Matilde Cassani Studio (Matilde Cassani, Leonardo Gatti) Graphic design: Italo Lupi Studio Graphic design communication Alessio D’Ellena, Superness Location Salone del Mobile 2022 Photos Giovanni Galanello
Overlooked by the history of art like many other twentieth century female artists, and included in Lea Vergine’s The Other Half of the Avant-Garde, published in the 1980s, Klein was one of the most interesting exponents of the Kinetism movement, founded by Franz Cizek in Vienna after the First World War. Right from its origins, Kinetism developed the idea that the individual energies of young people can only be freed from the rust of tradition by an education in art. It was a kind of humanistic avant-garde that connected dynamism with psychic and sensory movement, and renounced the aggressive myth of speed and movement embodied by Futurism. In this exhibition, the utopias linked to the theme of flight converge with two pillars of modern and contemporary art – light and movement – both of which stand at the centre of Klien’s visionary art. But the show – curated by Bart van der Heide, Andreas Hapkemeyer and Brita Köhler, with a layout designed by Matilde Cassani Studio– does more than simply recount and display her work. Bird Flight, in fact, creates a conversation between the works of the Austrian artist and a number of light and kinetic works from the Museion collection. These include four youthful works by Klien herself, in order to display her personal contribution to the Avant-Garde by demonstrating her contemporary relevance and influence on future generations. Alongside loans from the collections of the Belvedere Wien, the Vienna University of Applied Arts, the Wien Museum and the Eccel Kreuzer Museum in Bolzano, Bird Flight displays works from the 1920s by Max Oppenheimer, Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack, Elisabeth Karlinsky and Fortunato Depero, the 1960s by Dadamaino, Mark Adrian, Otto Piene, Günther Uecker and Alberto Biasi, and works by Eva Schlegel, Spencer Finch, Ceal Floyer, Benjamin Tomasi and Liliana Moro from the end of the 1990s.
Bird Flight. Erika Giovanna Klien in dialogue with contemporary artistic positions Exhibition: Bird Flight. Erika Giovanna Klien Erika Giovanna Klien in dialogue with contemporary artistic positions Curator: Bart van der Heide, Andreas Hapkemeyer and Brita Köhler Design: Matilde Cassani Studio (Matilde Cassani, Leonardo Gatti, Sara Badovinac) Location: Museion Photos Laura Egger, Luca Guadagnini, Daniel Walcher Sponsor Austrian Cultural Forum in Milan
The anthropological change of the architectural profession from the twentieth-century stereotype of the charismatic grandmaster to the growing presence of women, collectives and studio couples. The exhibition Good News aspires to document how new figures are infusing new forces into contemporary architecture. In particular, concerning the Museum’s Collection and the aim of expanding it, the exhibition pays particular attention to studios’ work directed or co-chaired by female designers and those professional bodies that are more aware of the changes taking place integrating them into their design process. On display, among other things, are some of the names and stories that have had, or still have, a crucial impact: from Charlotte Perriand to the 1970s collectives, from Elizabeth Diller to “realized” young promises such as Frida Escobedo and much more. The exhibition also includes a series of video interviews with authors/authors that reconstruct the stories and theories that accompany this narrative.
Buone nuove, 2021 Exhibition: Buone Nuove/Good News Curator: Elena Motisi, Elena Tinacci, Pippo Ciorra Design: Matilde Cassani Studio (Matilde Cassani, Leonardo Gatti, Sara Badovinac) Graphic design: Cinzia D’Emidio Location: Museo Maxxi, Roma Photos Musacchio, Ianniello, Pasqualini & Fucilla
Italian public space is also an interior or, better, a direct extension of the house. In the summer months, a chair represents the boundary between public and private and, as the hours go by, it can become a living room, a support for sewing, reading and a kitchen. The landlady is responsible for the space in front of the facade of the house. She awaits the arrival of objects of all kinds and people: from food to grandchildren, from friends to husband, until the evening. From the chairs on which they were portrayed, people on display chat between Basilicata, Umbria, Calabria and Sardinia.
Estate Italiana, 2021 Exhibition: Take your sit/ Prendi posizione Curator: Nina Bassoli Design: Matilde Cassani Studio (Matilde Cassani, Leonardo Gatti) Video: Giovanni Galanello Location: Supersalone 2021, Adi design Index, Fiera Milano
Restrooms are often described as neutral facilities or mere utilitarian infrastructures catering to the universal needs of individuals. But they are contested spaces that are shaped by and in turn shape the ways bodies and communities come together. Restrooms are architectures where gender, religion, race, ability, hygiene, health, environmental concerns, and the economy are defined culturally and articulated materially. In the last years, the climate crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, and growing tensions derived from population displacements have made these entanglements more evident. Restrooms are not an isolated design problem but rather symptoms of larger disputes that can be mediated through architectural tools. Restrooms are political architectures, they are battlegrounds.
Your restroom is a battleground, 2021 Research and Design: Matilde Cassani; Ignacio G. Galán; Iván L. Munuera; Joel Sanders Research and Design Collaboration: Seb Choe; Leonardo Gatti; Vanessa Gonzalez; Marco Li; and Maria Chiara Pastore Model Design and Production: Pablo Saiz del Rio Graphic and Web Design: Paula Vilaplana de Miguel Multimedia Production: Paula Vilaplana de Miguel and Jorge Lopez Conde Podcast voices: Maxime Diamond, Paola Pardo Castillo, Jean Im, Matty Cheesbrough, Stuart Sagar, Aimie Hamraie, Gavin Grimm, Jean Evens, Pierre Stanley, Thamara Hela, Barbara Penner, Joshua Block, Masixole Feni, Wang Xiu Ying, Antoine Comets, Malivai Luce Location: Corderie dell’Arsenale Sponsors: Elise Jaffe+Jeffrey Brown, Barnard College (Columbia University), Princeton University School of Architecture, Yale University School of Architecture
When we enter the restroom, we are never alone. Instead, we are entangled in a network of bodies, infrastructures, ecosystems, cultural norms, and regulations. In the Restroom Pavilion, some nodes within these networks are explored as they specifically materialize within Venice—a city that reveals itself as a constellation of mutually dependent environments and distinct geographies. In the Pavilion, a number of flags celebrate these networks in lieu of typical bathroom signage. Inside, a new materialization takes the place of the tiling that typically sustains modern and contemporary ideals of hygiene in the architecture of restrooms. If these ideals have typically operated through the creation of increasingly isolating and discriminatory practices, the Restroom Pavilion provides an inclusive description of the realities within which restrooms exist. In the restroom, we always live together.
The Restroom Pavilion, 2021 Exhibition: BIENNALE ARCHITETTURA 2021, HOW WILL WE LIVE TOGETHER? By: Matilde Cassani, Ignacio G. Galán, Iván L. Munuera With: Paula Vilaplana de Miguel, Leonardo Gatti, Pablo Saiz del Rio Institution: La Biennale di Venezia Curator: Hashim Sarkis with Ala Tannir Models: Pablo Saiz del Rio Photos: Imagen Subliminal (Miguel de Guzman + Rocio Romero), studio DSL Sponsors: Elise Jaffe+Jeffrey Brown, Barnard College (Columbia University), Princeton University School of Architecture, AC/E (Acción Cultural Española) Location: Giardini della Biennale
The exhibition “Il Dono. Tra la vita e la morte” takes as a point of departure from the Essai sur le Don ('The Gift’). Through historical works and new commission, the show investigates the theme of the gift, pushing it towards the two dialectical boundaries that determine the existence of every man: life and death. If “truth” remains the most discussed and indefinite theme in the contemporary world, the piece “La Bocca della Verità” questions the idea of truth, considering it as the true gift. Loosely inspired by the historic Roman “Bocca della Verità”, the large metal mask observes the viewer and, by mirroring him, confronts him. The mask releases into air silk handkerchiefs embroidered with his effigy. Once fired out of its mouth, they whirl around the room and finally land on the ground as an offering to the viewer.
La bocca della verità, 2020 Exhibition: Il Dono. Tra la vita e la morte Institution: Palazzo della Ragione, Bergamo/ artdate2020 Curator: Stefano Raimondi, The blank contemporary art Artists: Matilde Cassani, Alberto Garutti, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Andrea Mastrovito, Jonathan Monk, Andrea Romano, Namsal Siedlecki Production: La bocca della Verità was produced with the kind support of Ambrosini GT, Bergamo With: Leonardo Gatti Graphic design: Bianca Fabbri Photos: Paolo Biava Ricami: La nazionale manifatture
Massimo De Carlo, by moving his gallery to Casa Corbellini-Wassermann by Piero Portaluppi, got out of the globalized stereotype of the art gallery looking for a unique and distinctive identity. He believed it could have been of great inspiration to artists, who are much more stimulated by an environment rich in history than they are in a former industrial space. If the time has come to celebrate the end of the white box, the white cube, as the only architectural sign of the galleries and return to thinking about art in a context, likewise it is time to move out of art fair stands as pristine white-generic spaces. The series of furniture pieces and space additions follow this idea, adding tones and features able to customize and enhance the exhibition space of the fair.
Massimo De Carlo, art fairs 2019-2020 Exhibition design: Matilde Cassani with Leonardo Gatti Collaborators: Matteo Franti, Carolina Sartori At: Art Basel 2019, Fiac Paris 2019, Westbund Shangai 2019, Frieze Masters 2019, Art Basel Miami 2019, Taipei 2019, art Geneve 2020, Frieze Los Angeles 2020, Tefaf Maastricht 2019/2020. Manufacturer: Allestimenti Benfenati s.p.a
What does it mean today to talk about spirituality? On the spiritual matter of art is a project that investigates the issue of the spiritual through the lens of contemporary art and, at the same time, that of the ancient history of Rome. In a layout offering diverse possible paths, the exhibition features the works of 19 artists, leading names on the international scene from very different backgrounds and cultures. In a rigorously non-confessional vision, the exhibition, therefore, brings together works of contemporary art with a selection of archaeological relics from the capital’s leading museums: the Vatican Museums, the National Roman Museum, the Capitoline Museums and the National Etruscan Museum at Villa Giulia.
Tutto, 2020 Exhibition: Della materia spirituale dell’arte Institution: Museo Maxxi Curator: Bartolomeo Pietromarchi Artists: John Armleder, Matilde Cassani, Francesco Clemente, Enzo Cucchi, Elisabetta Di Maggio, Jimmie Durham, Haris Epaminonda, Hassan Khan, Kimsooja, Abdoulaye Konaté, Victor Man, Shirin Neshat, Yoko Ono, Michal Rovner, Remo Salvadori, Tomás Saraceno, Sean Scully, Jeremy Shaw, Namsal Siedlecki With: Leonardo Gatti Collaborators: Matteo Franti Photos: Musacchio, Iannello & Pasqualini Production: Colleoni, Bergamo.
The XXII Triennale di Milano, Broken Nature: Design Takes on Human Survival, highlights the concept of restorative design and studies the state of the threads that connect humans to their natural environments––some frayed, others altogether severed. In exploring architecture and design objects and concepts at all scales and in all materials, Broken Nature celebrates design’s ability to offer powerful insight into the key issues of our age, moving beyond pious deference and inconclusive anxiety. By turning its attention to human existence and persistence, the XXII Triennale will promote the importance of creative practices in surveying our species’ bonds with the complex systems in the world, and designing reparations when necessary, through objects, concepts, and new systems. Even to those who believe that the human species is inevitably going to become extinct at some point in the (near? far?) future, design presents the means to plan a more elegant ending. It can ensure that the next dominant species will remember us with a modicum of respect: as dignified and caring, if not intelligent, beings.
Broken Nature, 2018 Curator: Paola Antonelli, with Ala Tannir, Laura Maeran, Erica Petrillo and the support of Laurie Mandin Graphic Design: Anna Kulachek Exhibition design: Studio Folder and Matilde Cassani Design team: Studio Folder (Marco Ferrari and Elisa Pasqual with Grazia Mappa, Luigi Savio) and Matilde Cassani (with Guglielmo Campeggi, Leonardo Gatti). Construction Coordinator: Stefano Goffi Coordinator: Laura Agnesi International Relations Chief Officer: Marco Sammicheli Production: Violante Spinelli Barrile, Alessandra Cadioli, Luca Lipari and Laura Maeran Photos: DSL studio
Sunset percorre la linea di una serie di esperimenti sulla creazione di paesaggi artificiali utilizzando elementi di arredo tradizionali: tavoli, tende e sedute. La stanza ospita un tramonto ambientato in un panorama mobile fatto di paillettes. Un tavolo, un drappo e una sola fonte luminosa mettono in scena un paesaggio artificiale, fatto di forme astratte. Il visitatore, attratto dalle superfici lucentissime, lascia le sue tracce sfiorando ogni sua superficie. Il tramonto sarà ogni giorno diverso, il risultato del passaggio del visitatore.
Sunset, Una stanza tutta per se, 2018 Exhbition design: Matilde Cassani, with Leonardo Gatti and Guglielmo Campeggi Curated by: Domitilla Dardi At: Cantiere Galli, Roma Photos: Silvana Sprea Pailettes: FADA tessuti
The exhibition will present more than 100 works and enthralling objects that the gallerist has privately col lected, with passion and dedication, during his travels around the globe. The three collections that De Carlo has chosen to showcase embody a unique narrative that traces the hi story and culture of the 20th century and contribute to create new rela tionships between art disciplines and production systems of designers and artists. UNIQUE AND REPEATABLE investi gates the connections between art and industry, highlighting the recipro cal relationship that exists between work of art and serial artefacts. The exhibition brings together an enticing series of Weimar Republic ceramics produced before the Se cond World War, Alighiero Boetti’s iconic embroidered text works, and the posters created between the 1960’s and 1990’s by the Italian graphic designer AG Fronzoni. Each collection creates a narrative that encompasses how art and taste have embraced the industrial world and vice versa: the viewer, as Massimo De Carlo himself has done whilst creating these collections, is asked to reflect on the significance of the word unique and on what the notion and act of collecting actually means. These three very different body of works are installed in the spaces of La Triennale, where We have created an installation that allows the works to communicate with each other and highlights the narrative and senti mental value of these objects that are representations of a passion that goes beyond professional, cultural and geographical boundaries.
Unique and repeatable, 2018 Exhbition design: Matilde Cassani, with Leonardo Gatti Collaborator: Gianmaria Spedicato Artistic direction: Edoardo Bonaspetti At: La triennale di Milano Photos: Delfino Sisto Legnani e Marco Cappelletti, Gianluca di Ioia
Tutto draws on Sicilian baroque traditions and updates them by revealing the complexity of the new and different cultural inputs the city of Palermo experiences today. Four embroidered drapes, display four figures of saints, originally christian, carrying new and updated symbols. The project takes inspiration from the specifically Palermitan case in which there's a sincretic relationship between christian and hindu tamil communities. Santa rosalia, the city patron saint, and her rituals are participated by both communities.A daytime firework display, specifically designed for Quattro Canti in Palermo, blasts a series of colourful slips of paper with messages and images into the air. After the explosion all the pieces shot into the air slowly descend, dropping on the heads of the spectators, remaining partially attached to the facades of the surrounding buildings, clinging to a series of ropes connecting the buildings, and finally falling to the ground. The embroidered cloths, a selected number of paper slips and a photograph of the event are hosted in Palazzo Costantino, acting as a reminder of the celebration and becoming a collective memory for Tutto. The installation takes its cue from traditional Sicilian baroque events and engages the local residents, suggesting an official day of celebration to be added to the city’s calendar of festivities. The work focuses on the idea of celebration as a tool to describe a wider system of political, social and cultural environments.
Tutto, 2018 With: Leonardo Gatti Institution: Manifesta 12 Curated by: Bregtje Van der Haak, Mirjam Varidinis, Andres Jaque, Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli. Graphic design: Bianca Fabbri Photos: Delfino Sisto Legnani e Marco Cappelletti Production: Maria Elena Ciullo Manufacture: Sartoria Pipi Video: Cave studio Music: Una spina nel fianco, Tony La Mantia e Alberto Marcellino Daytime fireworks: Fuochi Chiarenza Drums: Giuseppe Misia e Maurizio Auccello Supported by: AMMODO and OUTSET
It is almost impossible to define the minbar as a fixed architectural typology, but perhaps it can be considered as an archetype: although its function is clear, to allow the speaker a privileged view and a more outstanding position, its shape varies according to an infinite series of factors and cultural inputs. The four models are based on a minbar found in the mosque of Al-Wahid in Milano and declined according to the four composing elements of a minbar: a seat, a step, a gate and the stairs. The four minbars respond to the same function yet are declined in four different manners based on the idea that every specific context, where a minbar is produced, and community, bring new meanings to a universal object. If form, material and decorations can vary its function stays as a raised spot from where the sermon is preached.
Four unknown types of minbars and their historical significance, 2018 With: Leonardo Gatti Institution: Venice Architecture Biennale, Kingdom of Bahrain Curator: Noura Al Sayeh, Nora Akawi Graphic design: Bianca Fabbri Commisioned by: Mai Al Khalifa, Bahrain Authority for Culture & Antiquities Produced by: Greco snc Website: http://www.bahrainpavilion.bh/exhibition/friday-sermon
“It’s just not cricket” is more than a simple exposition of objects and equipment related to the sport of cricket, even if at first glance if may look like this. The idiomatic meaning of this expression, as quintessentially English as the game of cricket itself, gives rise to the idea that we are dealing with an injustice: In English linguistic jargon, this phrase is used to express indignation at a lack of fairness or an injustice that has occurred. A colourful carpet, oversized gates, a ball and two bats, each made in North and South Tyrol from local materials: These are the components which make up the set of a seemingly interrupted game, now installed in the showroom and only awaiting the return of the players. A “display altar” features Alì Saqib’s private collection of bats from around the world, as well as balls and trophies won in countless tournaments. Alongside all this, a collection of shirts belonging to the numerous active teams in South Tyrol: Laives, Brenner, Sterzing, Auer, Bolzano – communities that have their own cricket teams and tournaments, but with little public awareness of their existence. The encounter with young cricketers from Pakistan, Afghanistan, India and Sri Lanka, who in some cases have lived for decades on both sides of the Brenner Pass, offers respite from the usual rhetoric of identity, borders, and of north and south. The circular history of cricket, which has returned to Europe from the British colonies, spreading under very different circumstances, provides the opportunity to reflect on the values of today’s urban and rural environments, as well as challenging the categories of time, entertainment, spectacle and spectatorship.
It’s just not cricket, 2018 With: Leonardo Gatti Institution: ar / ge kunst, Bolzano and Künstlerhaus Büchsenhausen, Innsbruck Curator: Emanuele Guidi, Andrei Siclodi Graphic design: Bianca Fabbri Photos: Luca Guadagnini e Tiberio Sorvillo Produced by: Barth interior, Bressanone
Ornament is a set of brass strips which adorns the entrance of the show in Washington Street. The granite stair is decorated with a series of Greek frets which recall the decorative elements found in the interiors of the Chicago Cultural center. The installation refers to the stair of Santa Maria del Monte in Caltagirone, Sicily. Made of 130 steps, the stair includes a series of raisers inspired at different architectural styles (from Renaissance, passing trough Baroque, until the 1800) and can be intended as a travel trough the history of architecture. Ornament indulges and highlights the mixed style nature of the interiors and the facades of the Chicago cultural center.
Ornament, 2017 With: Leonardo Gatti Institution: Chicago Cultural center, Chicago architecture biennale 2017 Curator: Johnston Marklee Photos: Ibay Rigby, Flavio Coddou Manufacture: Simone Bordoni
A series of displays showcase the large Archive of the Feltrinelli Foundation and make it accessible to a wider audience. Visitors can experience the history of the collection inside the brand new headquarter. The exhibition system doesn’t impact the scheduled activities but merges with them by letting people experience the history of the collezione during their visit. The exhibition design features a series of modular and flexible displays able to showcase a wide range of objects. Suspended steel cables hold the entire set-up.
Archivio Feltrinelli, 2017 With: Leonardo Gatti, Giordano Sarno Graphic Design: Bianca Fabbri, Simone Bastianelli Institution: Fondazione Feltrinelli Photos: Pietro Pappalardo Manufacture: Tecnolegno
Flags for future neighborhoods features a series of flags purposely designed for Aarhus’ port’s different piers. Each pier is named after a specific event and the flag mirrors its identity. The author went on a field survey, together with the photographer, Martin Dam Christensen, around the harbor where she interviewed the current inhabitants, its regular clients and workers. People where called upon to give suggestions, tell stories and share memories related to each specific site. The final flags are a superposition of an official maritime flag, corresponding to the initial letter of a place, an object or an event in the harbor, and a symbol related to the site’s everyday use or tradition. Each event tells a story of mixed cultural influences, typical from a port, from Thailand to the Netherlands, from Germany to China. The project anticipates and welcomes the development of the harbor into a more urban environment and, at the same time, allows to keep its collective memories. As a primary form of urbanization, the flags add a historical layer to a territory yet to be discovered and imagined by the citizens of Aarhus.
Flags for future neighborhoods, 2017 With: Bianca Fabbri Institution: Aarhus Festuge, 2017 Curators: LIST Photos: Martin Dam Christensen Manufacture: La nazionale manifatture
Panorama I and II, create a hybrid, imaginary and mobile landscape, made by color fields. A curtain and a table stage an artificial landscape made of abstract shapes. Curtains, perceived from afar as solid surfaces, dissolve in a sequence of individual threads when the visitor passes through or touches the surface.
Panorama, 2017 With: Bianca Fabbri Institution: Miart 2017 Curators: Colleoni Arte Photos: Martina Scaravati
“Atelier del mare” is a public project designed for to the kids of Scicli’s secondary school. It is an archive of objects, carefully stored on the shelves of a wide closet. Every shelf can host a small group of objects, which recall the relationship between man and sea: fishermen, barges, sailing boats, sun, water and the surface of the sand. The objects, collected by the children from the nearby beach, are all things the sea leaves behind the waves. The child can thus experience, understand and respect the sea, its natural and its artificial inhabitants.
Atelier del mare, Scicli 2017 With: Bianca Fabbri Institution: Fondazione Reggio Children, Enel Cuore Onlus Manufacture: Oleari
GENDA is an indipendent magazine edited by a+mbookstore edizioni, Milan with a double editorial staff, Italian and Chinese. The first issue is dedicated to the role of the body in western and eastern cultures. The photographs featured in the magazine are shown in the exhibition “Body as Packaging”. The body as construction material, deprived of its sexual, moral, social aspects. The body used like any other material, a form to assemble, overlay, split, observe, forget. The body as just another object, not instrument, not seduction, not for exchange, not as a place of violence to attack the person. Body without rhetoric, history, ethics, deprived of that dignity we take for granted and that recogition that pertains to a living person. Body as encumbrance, structure, scaffolding, and nothing more.
Body as packaging, 2017 With: with Bianca Fabbri, Maria Francesca Frosi Institution: Arte Fiera, Bologna Exhibition Center Curators: Master in Photography Stefano Graziani, Amedeo Martegani, Andrea Pertoldeo Graphic design: Teresa Piardi Coordinator: Silvia Ponzoni, Alberto Sinigaglia
The gonfalon, gonfanon or gonfalone (from the early Italian confalone) is a type of heraldic flag or banner, often pointed, swallow-tailed, or with several streamers, suspended from a crossbar in an identical manner to the ancient Roman vexillum. It was first adopted by Italian medieval city councils, and later, by local guilds, corporations and districts. A gonfalone normally includes a badge, or coat of arms, and ornamentation taken from the local collective memory. Its overall layout is generally fixed, according to strict heraldic rules, common to every city, while the content and the symbols, vary according to the specificity of the place. Today every Italian municipality has a gonfalone which reflects the identity of the city and is regularly used in any official occasion: ecclesiastic ceremonies, processions, university ceremonies, town feasts and even weddings. We proposed to organize a worshop with the aim to re-think the Gonfalone, traditional symbol of identity for every italian comune. The event’s goal was to try to re-design a new urban interpretation of Prato, using, as a starting point, the existing one and its heraldic language. Building on the existing illustrations, we discussed how to re-actualize it, in accordance with the changing needs of the contemporary world, the new local identity and the collective memory. A number of representatives of the local institutions, were called upon to design a new symbol for the city.
Sewing machines, dragons, watermelons and firecrackers, 2016 With: Martina Motta Institution: After Belonging, OAT, Oslo Architecture Triennale, 2016 Curators: Lluís Alexandre Casanovas Blanco, Ignacio G. Galán, Carlos Mínguez Carrasco, Alejandra Navarrete Llopis and Marina Otero Ver Graphic design: Bianca Fabbri Photos: Delfino Sisto Legnani and Marco Cappelletti Video: Antonio Buonsante Rubber-stamps: Sebastiano Conti Gallenti Workshop organization: Martina Motta and Lottozero (Tessa and Arianna Moroder) Workshop location: Associazione culturale Chì-na (Cosimo Balestri, Emanuele Barili, Luca Ficini, Alberto e Guido Gramigni) Manufacture: Giovanni Nizzola, La Nazionale Manifatturie S.N.C., Ricamo Bollate
Article 10 is a project that provides basic health care through the EMERGENCY Association. The device includes a basic outpatients clinic and a waiting room, sheltered and shaded, on the outside. A system of overlapping curtains provides shade in summer and insulation in winter. During the night, a bright sphere illuminates the surrounding area, enlarging its field of action to a public space and indicating its presence even at a distance.
Articolo 10, 2016 With: Matteo Schiavone Institution: XV Biennale di Venezia Architettura ,2016 Curator: tamassociati Graphic design: Bianca Fabbri
The exhibition features a new interpretation of the role of the Istituto Italiano di Cultura in Paris and promotes the excellence of Italian culture. Invited contributors have been asked to imagine a possible future, for the two lost wings of the Hôtel de Galliffet, by re-actualizing the Italian Cultural Institute's role as a cultural trading center.
Le ali ritrovate dell'Hotel de Galliffet, 2016 Institution: Istituto Italiano di Cultura, Paris Director: Marina Valensise Curator: Matilde Cassani Graphic design: Bianca Fabbri Contributors: baukuh, Diverserighe, StudioErrante, Sara Gangemi e Francesca Cesa Bianchi, Tomas Ghisellini Atelier di Architettura, Margine, Piovenefabi, Università Roma Tre, stARTT, Tierstudio Maquette: Sebastiano Conti Gallenti — SE.BA.LAB. Photos: Juan Sepulveda
For four months the exhibition space of Istituto Svizzero in Milan will be inhabited by the temporary bookshop RIVIERA. Here the time and space of exhibitions and reading will cross, contaminate and interfere with one another to become a place crossed by many possible trajectories and histories, addressed each time through a precise selection of books and exhibitions connected with graphics, design, fashion and the visual arts. RIVIERA is a project developed in collaboration with Caterina Riva and Dallas, in which books are the protagonists: as objects, contents, forms, pretexts, obsessions, collectibles or curiosities, mirrors, obstacles, mirages. The bookshop, organized in collaboration with a+m bookstore, will offer a stock of titles that increases over time, becoming the fulcrum of a versatile period containing different appointments: presentations, interventions, performances, sales, exhibitions. The installation by Matilde Cassani, like a flight of steps, offers the infrastructure and setting that will fill up and empty like the tides, to contain publications, works and visitors, transforming each time, balancing the functions of audience space and stage space.
Riviera, 2016 Institution: Istituto Svizzero, Milano Curators: Caterina Riva, Dallas (Francesco Valtolina, Kevin Pedron) Team: Bianca Fabbri Intern: Safa Hilmi Aktas Photos: Delfino Sisto Legnani Studio
WELCOME, welcomes the public to the show. It is at once a point of view, a decorated entrance and a celebration of movement in space. WELCOME is concerned with how bodies perform the function of a physical space through how they use and inhabit that space, revealing how a space becomes a place, only in the moment in which a ritual is performed. Physically, the threshold itself can be perceived initially as a solid, geometric shape, made of tangible shiny surfaces, that dissolve into thousands of individual threads the instant the visitor crosses through. The shape of the work is drawn from the form of a curtain, relating to the collective memory of old grocery shops, Southern Italy ground floor interiors and the background of a stage show. The visitor, crossing the entrance could instantly reconstruct a scenario made of sudden revelations, food smells, domestic interiors and the expectation for a show that is about to begin.
Welcome, 2015 Exhibition: The man who sat on himself Institution: Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Torino Curators: Kate Strain, Angelica Sule, Zsuzsanna Stànitz Artists: Riccardo Arena, Tomaso de Luca, Matilde Cassani, Riccardo Giacconi, Matteo Stocco Graphic design: Studio MUT
The tea room is designed to frame, without disturbing, the geometric gestures of Michiko, who slowly moves through space, leaving nothing to chance. The four walls of the room can be fully opened during the performance, in order to make room for a larger audience. The intimacy of a place that can hold up to three people becomes suddenly shared. The box becomes a background and the audience is both the viewer and the guest of the performed ritual. The ceremony, from private, becomes public. The simplicity of the design accurately reflects the need to focus on the movements produced in a time which is both stretched and quiet. The few objects arranged on the Tatami wait for the arrival of the teacher. The background acts as a window on an imaginary colorful and natural landscape, which, in this case, is just the blurred image of the exhibition that runs behind the scene.
Chashitsu per Michiko, 2015 Exhibition: Museo MAXXI, “Food, dal cucchiaio al mondo” Institution: MAXXI Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI secolo, Roma Curator: Pippo Ciorra Team: Martina Motta Photos: Mattia Panunzio Video: Studio Ancarani
At a time when Britain will be engaged in the democratic process of an election, the Victoria and Albert will examine the role of public institutions in contemporary life and what it means to be responsible for a national collection. A series of specially commissioned interventions around the Museum will raise questions about the opportunities, obligations and limits to participation in this national institution.
A celebration day, 2015 Exhibition: All of this belongs to you Institution: Victoria and Abert museum Curator: Corinna Gardner, Rory Hyde, kieran Long Artists: Jorge Otero-Pailos, Natalie Jeremjenko, Muf Architecture–Art, James Bridle, Femke Herregraven, Kyle Macdonald, Matilde Cassani
Promesse dell'arte, 2015 Institution: Istituro italiano di cultura, Parigi Artist in residence: Matilde Cassani Programme: Promesse dell'arte, 2015
Every year the numerous Sikh temples built across the Italian agricultural farmlands of the Pianura Padana host a huge harvest festival, the Vaisakhi, bringing together thousands of Sikhs. During this time, the religious diversity of the rural Italian population becomes evident; in just 20 years, the country has developed from a clear Catholic majority to a complex and unique pattern of religious communities. "The Vaisakhi questions how urban reality and the use of urban spaces change much more quickly than do urban planning policies, tools or regulations.
Countryside worship/A celebration Day Exhibition: Monditalia Institution: XIV Architecture Biennale, Venezia Curator: Rem Kolhaas Author: Matilde Cassani Team: Delfino Sisto Legnani, Photography Martina Motta, research assistant Photos: Delfino Sisto Legnani
The Italian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2014 launched the open call Inhabited Landscapes/ Paesaggi Abitati. The exhbition features a series of professional and amateur videos displaying the complexity of the italian landscape. The result is a mosaic of 1 minute videos which document the italian urban space, its inhabitants and the everyday small modifications happening troughout the contry. Floor is a public infrastructure, able to host and embrace the audience, tired after a very long walk from the entrance to the very far Italian Pavilion located at the end of Arsenale.
Paesaggi abitati/Floor Curator: Cino Zucchi, Studio Azzurro Exhibition: Monditalia Institution: XIV Architecture Biennale, Venezia Author: Matilde Cassani Photos: Delfino Sisto Legnani Sponsor: Valchromat
Good News is a covered square, a stage for events and a landmark. A thin colorful tent shades the steps of the courtyard of the Maxxi Museum, offering to the visitors a comfortable indoor space. A large rectangular iron frame, which supports the tent, contains a stage designed to host events organized by the museum and other occasional performances. A large illuminated “Good News” text, dominates the scene, as if to ensure the good mood of the passers-by. The good news bright sign is an unexpected positive message that subverts the expectations of the visitor. If public space is generally full of prohibitions and warning messages, in this case the audience will be surprised by an encouraging message.
Good News, 2014 — Shortlisted Institution: MAXXI Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI secolo, Roma Competition: Young Architect Programme MAXXI, 2014 Author: Matilde Cassani Team: Giorgia Cilli e Stefano Zagni Website: http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/yap/
Private. Because, more often than not, the public doesn’t care. The conversations will assume their private nature and even attempt to be intimate. They will be held according to the Chatham House rules and will not be filmed nor re-transcribed. Conversations. Since the conversations have no ambition of being public, they will attempt to provide a flexible format of discussions and exchanges. In. The talks will be held in two of the first completed public squares of the Pearling, Testimony of an Island Economy UNESCO World Heritage site designed by Office Kersten Geers David Van Severen and Bureau Bas Smets. Completed in late December 2013, they are part of the very few planned public squares to be introduced to the heart of historic Muharraq in more than 20 years and are therefore experiments that can be taken as case studies for the conversations. Public. What is public today? The conversations are imagined as a confrontation between the private nature of the event and the public ambition of the place. Places Not spaces. Because public space has been having an identity crisis since the 1980s. Further aggravated by the invasion of the internet and its redefining of public practice, few people can give a simple explanation as to what public space is today or what it’s supposed to do. Place, puts an emphasis on the attempt to create a specific local identity and in defining the here as different to there.
Munari was creating projects that could change indefinitely, without ever losing his and their nature. The identity layed in the possibility of infinite mutations. The project was a combination of technique, cleverness and irony. In “Munari, percorsi a mezz’aria” the visitor can experience the anxiety to seek a position in space identifying himself for a moment in Munari who could sit on a chair in 100 different ways.
Bruno Munari, Percorsi a mezzaria, 2013 Exhibition: Design, La Sindrome dell’influenza Curator: Pierluigi Nicolin Institution: La Triennale di Milano Authors: Matilde Cassani, Francesco Librizzi Performer: Filippo Malerba Exhbition design: Studio Cerri Photos: La Triennale, Paolo Rosselli Video: Pierluigi Anselmi
A fragment of reality: Ground Atlas is a Hybrid project. It takes inpiration from public places, both natural and artificial. It recalls a beach in the relation established between water and ground, by its uses and its accessibility. It recalls Italian Piazza usually characterized by stone pavements laid geometrically. On the contrary, the choice of the materials reminds of the temporary and sudden atmosphere of the town feasts, from which it draws ephemeral construction methods and light decorations. Ground Atlas is an imaginary section on the reality, a portion of Italy during the summer months: a square with stalls, a crowded beach with beach umbrellas, a fountain with people sitting on the edges. Ground Atlas, albeit very small, is in between the artificial reconstruction of a natural landscape, a beach, a public urban space, a square, and a revival of a traditional sculptural monument, a fountain. The result is a new place, where no one have ever been. New artificial orizions: A large staircase introduces the visitor to a sloping wooden platform placed on the steps of the Maxxi Museum. The platform turns the steps into a large flat surface that gently declines until it disappears into a square filled with by water. The proposed intervention is hardly visible in section, while the area covered is remarkable. Its surface area is large and immersive and is made to lie down and look up to see who is coming from the front and to look down taking the ncounter between water and wood as an artificial horizon. The platform is visible from the inside of the museum in almost all its extension: the floor outer space of the square then becomes the new landscape. Leaves room for different perspectives and allows the visitor to watch itself and its surroundings. The guest, while lying, revises the image of the courtyard by inserting new characters: the facades of the surrounding buildings, the volumes of the museum seen from below, the fifth in the trees taht line the stsircase teh sky and finally the horizon of wood and water. Ground Atlas is therefore a device (or perhaps a ploy) to immerse the visitor in the square of the Maxxi, making him feel in that place but also elsewhere, ina sort of forced but pleasant ubiquity, where exceptional memories mingle with more everyday memoirs. The visitor lies downa dn remembers the square in front of the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Piazza del Campo in Siena, reminiscent of the last beach summer vacation and recalls the boat trip to go to Greece the year of maturity. The feast: A moltitude of colored flags visible from a distance, gives the essence of town feast but also the idea of the opening ceremony of a new public space offered to the city.
Ground Atlas, 2013 — Shortlisted Institution: MAXXI Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI secolo, Roma Competition: Young Architects Programme MAXXI 2013 Author: Matilde Cassani Team: Giorgia Cilli, Deniz Sak, Eugenia Macchia
A long frame lies in the middle of the garden and separates the green in two parts. One is closer to the exhisting building and brings on the contact with previous activities. The other is a new private place surrounded by leaves. The pavilion in the garden plays both the role of a scenic background and a stage. It is something in between artificial and natural and allows outdoor technical activities. A curtain filters natural light over the new surfaces and protects from the rain: the soft roof fixes the vertical limit of the pavilion and defines the space. Furniture is spread all over natural and artificial fields, disposable for multiple layouts. Armchairs are both private seats on the green, or public seats for talks under a common roof and added to small tables create coffee layouts. A monochromatic volume stands in the background, hosting space for storage, a bar and a white screen for projections.
Mineralwasser, 2012 — 2° Prize Competition: Pabellon Archivo Institution: Archivo Diseno y Architectura Authors: Matilde Cassani, Francesco Librizzi Website: http://archivonline.org/exhibitions/pabellon-archivo/
Through seemingly random scenes of Bahraini landscapes, the installation evokes the construction of a collective imaginary of remote places trough theri fragmented appearance in the media and in our living rooms. The normally individual act of media imagery consumption becomes a collective experience shared in the space of the Arsenale, where background imagery of the faraway is isolated and become a sensorial experience. These images add themselves to other images conjured in your head of this place; another set of mental images of a place you might never visit, but that you will certainly construct an imaginary of. The installation shows a landscape transformed by the passage of time, the change of daylight, of seasons and by the succession of different moments of the day. The sensation of being inside a real place, albeit a very far one, gives the installation a quality of pure context; and perhaps offers the viewer an experimental “memento”. Time will simultaneously pass in Venice and in Bahrain. The viewer is part of a long “now” lasting as long as he has the patience to wait. Altrough the locations are but two points in space and time, the projections share one proposed reality.
Background, 2012 Exhibition: XIII Venice architecture Biennale, Venezia Commissioner: Kingdom of Bahrain, National Participation Authors: Matilde Cassani, Francesco Librizzi, Stefano Tropea Curator: Noura Al Sayeh Graphic design: Jonathan Hares Photos: Giovanna Silva Executive direction assistance: La meduse Video: Giorgio De Vecchi
Three Sundays a year, Headlands center of the arts invites people to roam the various buildings of its campus, engage with artists in their studios, experience new work and works in progress. Open house connects visitors to the working process of artists and fosters casual conversation about the creative process. Scheduled in conjunction with Headlands' three artists in residence season, open house features curated happenings and events scheduled throughout the day including readigs, preformances, screenings, and guided walks. A boring table was disigned in occasion of the Open house in the fall of 2012 in the Mess hall. It is a site specific installation designed to host a series of tables around the eight cast iron columns of the room. The conversation among invited guests is continuosly obstructed by the coloumn, the real protagonist of the dialog.
A boring table, 2012 Exhibition: Open house Institution: Headlands center of the arts, San Francisco, CA Author:Matilde Cassani Curator:Brian Karl
The public images of cities tend to be defined by the iconic photographs with which their buildings, neighborhoods, skylines and vistas are represented, even though the views portrayed in these stereotypical images are frequently at odds with the life of the city and the reality of what occurs in them. In this exhibit we are interested in collecting together "anti-iconic views," both in terms of visual experience and political reality, of a broad selection of cities. The exhibit promoted unfamiliar views of familiar places in order to change how we think about and represent them, and look for ways to embody alternative viewpoints in the construction of images. Along with the premise that our experience of cities is informed by the ways it is represented, is an interest in physical aspects of the photographic image, and techniques for applying distinctly architectural operations, such as the materiality of the printed surface, the assembly of multiple frameworks into a single construct, and the spatial or narrative aspects of compositional form. From Felix Bonfils' panoramic view of Damascus and Ed Ruscha's All of the Buildings on Sunset Strip to images from Venturi Scott Brown's Learning From Las Vegas, and David Hockney's photo-joiners of Southern California- innovative photographs have not only redefined the ways we think about and document places, but have also triggered new approaches to the ways we design them. Given the shift from developing and enlarging toward processing and printing, what is the status of the constructed image as a means of communicating a place and how do we assemble shots of a city in a way that engage its particular qualities? From the selection of specific features that best encapsulate the ethos of a particular city, to the material structure of the image, format and assembly, the selected photo-constructs created a spatial geography as much about the physical attributes of photographs and the space in which they are displayed as they are about the cities they portray.
Unprivileged views, 2012 Exhibition: Unprivileged views / Hier beginnt die Welt Institution: Wuho Gallery, Los Angeles, US / Kunsthaus Langenthal, CH Curators: Eric Olsen, Keith Mitnick with Danielle Etzler, Reto Geiser, Keith Krumwiede, Mireille Roddier, Paulette Singley, and Mark Wasiuta / Raffael Dorig Author: Matilde Cassani Tecnique: Lenticular Prints, 11x17 inches, brass plates.
What we see, by examining the physical space that lays between built structures, is a sort of solid memory, the recording of what happened in that precise space in a precise specific moment of a certainits history of a place. This space can be unplanned, or it can be the leftover of stratifications of time and subsequent small interventions, or can be completely designed as well, thereby clearly reflecting its function. Each view is an imaginary portion of the public soil and describes the continual intervention of the men on the field. Each square has an arbitrary boundary being as a partial view of a possibly potentially infinite surface.
31 Imaginary public spaces 1:100, 2011 Institution: FFAR Forum för arkitektur, Stockholm Exhibition: The even covering of the field Curator: Fritz Halvorsen Artists: Matilde Cassani, Sam Jacob, Ignacio Uriarte Website: http://www.ffar.se
81 Imaginary public spaces 1:100, 2011 Institution: Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart 2011 Institution: Ausstellungseroffnungen und filmpremiere Author: Matilde Cassani Artists: Matilde Cassani, Sean Dack, Antje Kalus, Zsuzsanna Szentirmai-Joly, Assoua Achille Brice Eteki
The exhibit is a journey that starts in the present day and leads into Italy’s future. What it will be and what we want it to be through those ideas that are already out there on the territory and that will become a part of our life in the next ten years, as the future is not illusion, idealism or science fiction, but is made of the many stories, big or small, of those who work every day. The ideas, prototypes, products and processes that best express Italian creativity and innovation are at the heart of the exhibition. They come from public institutions, private research centres, large companies and individual inventors. The items are narrated using sophisticated languages such as multimedia, 3-D videos, holograms and augmented reality and are grouped according to areas that have been identified by evaluating the pivots of local and global change in the next ten years: energy, territory protection, waste products, chemistry, textile, mobility, homing, food and health, communication, work, robotics and space. The staging rebuilds a cutaway of an ideal City of Ideas, where each theme corresponds to an exhibit block composed of connecting cubical elements, which visitors can enter into and exit from. Thus, the narration is fluid and non linear, allowing the visitor to be free to know, experiment, share and therefore to participate actively and creatively to what is not intended to be an authorial piece of work but a work-in-progress, an open and collective construction of what lies ahead in Italy’s future.”
Piazza Unità d’Italia, 2011 At: Officina Grandi Riparazioni, Torino 2011 Exhibition: Stazione futuro: qui si rifà l’Italia Curator: Luca Molinari Author: Matilde Cassani
An original 1900 house, where windows, doors and tiled floors survived to modernity. The only possible intervebntion was an almost-2D frame, able to double the space in height and create new possibilities on other layers.
A small flat, 2010 Authors: Francesco Librizzi, Matilde Cassani Photos: Giovanna Silva
TIMING 2010, gives the opportunity to improve the commercial system currently based on a net of small retail shops. Long ground floor sidewalks and porches are characterized as commercial promenades, where small shops open their windows and display their products. The public space thus becomes a chance to create links and smart knots between small commercial entities, improving their surface, creating new displays and extra facilities usually not included into these very narrow spaces. Our proposal addresses its interest to the small commercial centers trough out the city. The retail centres, as suggested, are simply the ground floors of adjacent residential buildings, usually the porch part. Each building block works as the centre for a system of commercial units, offering some facilities to the inhabitants. The single shops are usually small and disorganized, the signs are not properly visible from the road and the small windows do not allow to exhibit the products. Moreover, these “ground floor commercial roads” don’t work as a proper public space. The aim is to create smart connections between the low density network of small retail shops and the public space. Some smart objects can create additional volume within the city, thus activating non used portions of the road, where everyday paths and trajectories cross the commercial activities. Thus giving rise to an extra-time use of this areas, trough extended commercial functions and unexpected public facilities. The new additional structures can start as temporary plug-in boxes connected to any shop to provide extra dressing rooms, or extra strorage or additional displays. But immediately they can permanently change the use of the public space, asking the city rules to deal with the new commercial attitudes activated among the citizens. The beneficiaries are the shop owners, the inhabitants or either the jay walkers.
Extra Retail Unit, 2010 Exhibition: Bat-Yam Biennale of Landscape Architecture, Timing 2010 Curators: Yael Moria Klein, Sigal Barnir Authors: Matilde Cassani, Francesco Librizzi
While smoking is being gradually eliminated from public spaces, it doesn’t seem that it can be associated with private life only. Antje Kalus and Matilde Cassani redesigned the smoker’s niche in Schloss Solitude, giving to it a wimbledon green and snow white décor, against the dark-grey coating left by the generations of former fellows. The spheric shape seen in foreshortening gives another glimpse on a too strict division – and thus reopens, again, the socializing factor of Solitude’s life. A friendly place for smokers. Ana Ptak
Smoke!, 2010 Institution: Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, DE Curator: Jean Baptiste Joly Authors: Matilde Cassani, Antje Kalus
"Sacred Interiors and Profane Buildings" is a recent piece of research by the Italian artist Matilde Cassani inspired by the dilemmas of Europe in relating herself to her non-Christian immigrants. She mapped out the sacred places of Muslims, Singhs and Buddhists in Barcelona, which mostly occupy unexpected and inconspicuous locations such as empty, unused shops or garage extensions. These spaces are transformed according to the needs of the community performing its religious duties inside. Cassani’s research maps out one of the important frictions in European countries that on the surface seem to tolerate the differences but in actuality leaving no space for differences to appear in their usual order. Furthermore, she points out the survival instincts of global communities. Sacred Interiors and Profane Buildings manifest the ridiculousness of the mentality of "Minarett-Attack" in Europe today. Ovul Durmusoglu
The holy book/sacred interiors in profane buildings Exhibition: Another Country/Eine Andere Welt Institution: IFA Galerie, Stuttgart 2010, Berlin 2011 Curator: Ovul Durmusoglu Author: Matilde Cassani, Demian Bern Graphic Design: Demian Bern Artists: Matilde Cassani, Koken Erung, Cevdet Erek, Javier Hinojosa, Ashley Hunt
Through analytical and speculative works, Sacred Spaces in Profane Buildings is a public archive and exhibition that explores the impact of religious diversity on the contemporary city and the new, non-traditional spaces in which contemporary religious pluralism manifests itself. The diffusion of new urban religious communities is a central feature in growing contemporary urban societies: until a few years ago, it was thought that the link between public and religious places would gradually disappear as societies gave way to secularity. However, the demand for religious spaces has not diminished, it has simply been altered. Sacred Spaces in Profane Buildings describes the birth of religious architecture and communities as it manifests itself in the contemporary urban context. The project is a transversal investigation of the architectures, policies and multitude of individual acts through which each religion inhabits and transforms the city of New York. As most contemporary western cities, reveals a partial image of its religious landscape. Urbanistically, it either provides an illusion of secularity (through words like "community center") in regard to new religious constructions or presents existing religious buildings prominently as historical artifacts. New religious manifestations through architectural or urban interventions are polemical and only easily allowed in the spaces of the uncharted periphery. However, religious spaces exist in the very center of each community. The archive intends to construct a public archive that explores the urban, social and formal implications of these urban religious practices. An open call for contributions invites the public to submit stories or memories of a visit, a photograph, a location in a map, or anything that might help construct the most comprehensive guide to the sacred unknown of New York. The exhibition as part of Sacred Spaces in Profane Buildings project transformed Storefront's Acconci-Holl façade into a golden wall framing three different series of objects: Taxonomical Readings of the New York Archive; Spiritual Devices; and Symbolic Objects.
Sacred spaces in profane buildings: the New York Archive, 2011 Exhibition: Sacred Spaces in Profane buildings Institution: Storefront for art and architecture, New York, NY Curator: Eva Franch Author: Matilde Cassani Graphic design: NR2154 website: http://storefrontnews.org/ http://sacredspacesinprofanebuildings.com/
What is the impact of religious pluralism on a contemporary city? What are the new places in which religious pluralism manifests itself? The increasing phenomenon of migration imposes today a reflection on the social, economic and spatial consequences that multiculturalism brings with itself. The global diffusion of new urban religious communities that have emerged across different religions and different state and city types have become a central feature of urban societies and a new challenge for urban planners. The research aims to describe the birth of religious architecture and communities in the world's metropolises as it manifests itself. In particular, the subject of my research is the transversal investigation of the buildings, of the policies, of the state of the art of the planning instruments and also, on the microcosm of informal and acts, thanks to which, in absence of a precise legislation, our new societies form, grow and transform. Moreover, by interlinking a series of significant case studies that demonstrate the return of the religious in the metropolises of the world will be unveiled how this kind of spatial needs, creating pressure on the policies could push the planning instruments ahead. Its purpose is to generate new knowledge about a social phenomenon with huge implications for the future urban policies that has so far received scarce attention in both architecture and urban planning.
Sacred interiors in profane buildings, 2010 – Ongoing
For this project, Cassani spearheaded a comprehensive investigation of the pivotal needs for prayer rituals of four world religions as regards space, furnishings, and other objects. The artist’s orientation here was particularly geared toward the makeshift, sometimes unofficial prayers rooms of religious minorities in European cities. She developed four mobile modules in which the most important standards for praying in Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Sikhism were addressed and fulfilled while engaging the smallest amount of space possible. The elements are all mass-produced objects, that, in abscence of the proper ones, act as sacred objects. The container is a 1 x 2 metres large box, foldable and transportable. The site is an airport, a prison, a cruise liner, a street or a garage. As a metaphore of the current reality the “Spiritual device" act as solidified heterotopy. The iconic, central, clear image of a place to worship becomes a box to be treated with strong faith.
Spiritual Devices, 2010 Exhibition: Territorien des In/Humanen-Territories of the in/Human Institution: Württembergischen Kunstverein, Stuttgart, DE Foundation: Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, DE in cooperation with Württembergischer Kunstverein Curators: Hans Christ and Iris Dressler Author: Matilde Cassani Engineering and manufacture: Sebastiano Conti Gallenti, Sara Galli Audio: Norbert Schliewe Photos: Ivan Sarfatti Website: www.design-in-human.de