2007 - WEAVING TIME miniartextil Como
29.9. - 4.11.2007
MINIARTEXTIL 2007 COMO
With the patronage of: The Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities
Press Release 29.08.2007
The show, planned and organised by the Association Arte&Arte, with the patronage of the Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities and the Regione Lombardia, and with the patronage and support of the Comune di Como, Provincia di Como and Chamber of Commerce, is set to take place in four important venues: the historic San Francesco church, Palazzo del Broletto, the atmospheric Sant’Eufemia cloister and the Como Chamber of Commerce.
The exhibition, curated by Luciano Caramel, features around 120 works including some being shown for the first time, by artists mainly from Eastern and Western Europe, the United States, South America and Asia. It will be an opportunity to admire more than fifty minitextile pieces, as well as twenty large installations, a video and a retrospective dedicated to Marisa Bronzini.
The minitextile pieces on display in the Chiesa di San Francesco, include works by Anastasia Azure (United States), Ceca Georgieva (Bulgaria), Alvaro Diego Gomez Campuzano (Columbia), Pamela Hardesty(Ireland), Ieva Krumina (Latvia), Violetta Piskurewicz (Poland), Johanna Virtanen(Finland), Barbara Esser and Wolfgang Horn (Germany), and Luciana Costa Gianello, Antonio Bernardo and Giovanna Bolognini (Italy).
As for the large installations, presented in San Francesco, these include the work by Egyptian artist Sabah Naim, a series of light, diaphanous sheets hanging from the ceiling, featuring single, life-sized black and white images of inhabitants of Cairo: soldiers, old people, children and women who represent the wide social and cultural range among the city’s population.
Other installations include the work of Fatma Charfi M'seddi (Switzerland-Tunisia), Machiko Agano (Japan), Sun-Rae Kim (Korea), and Alvaro Diego Gomez Campuzano (Columbia).
Palazzo del Broletto will be playing host to the works of the late Marisa Bronzini, with a solo exhibition comprising around forty small and medium-large works: an important retrospective of her extensive body of work, from the twenties to the present day.
The Chiostrino di Sant'Eufemia is set to host three installations by international artists and six carpets. The Como Chamber of Commerce will be the venue for the work by Dorothea Reese-Heim (Germany), an installation in fibre glass, aluminium mesh and mirror glass measuring 75x175x225 cm.
As the curator Luciano Caramel underlines: “weaving time. 2007miniartextilcomo acknowledges the synergies between the historic and the contemporary, past and present, the encounter between diverse textile techniques and materials and the most recent forms of contemporary art”. The show presents some of the most important international artists working in the field of Textile Art, an art form that draws on and innovates time-honoured textile traditions, sometimes even revolutionising approaches and materials, with powerfully appealing results.
Using linen or bamboo, silk, copper, cotton, raffia, coconut fibre or organza, the artists have interpreted the theme of the passing of time and the stuff of daily life, as seen, among others, in the minitextiles by Kela Cremaschi (Italy), Anny Ferrario (Italy), Ursula Gerber-Senger (Switzerland), Kakuku Ishii (Japan), Renata Jackowiak (Poland) and Michiko Sakuma (Japan).
The event was created by Nazzarena Bortolaso and Mimmo Totaro, founders of the Cultural Association Arte&Arte. "The first Miniartextil event took place in 1991 and since then it has gone on to earn increasing prestige, becoming one of a kind in Italy”, the organisers comment. “It has won over the international art world. The event came into being in Como, birthplace of the Italian silk industry, and has come to represent a point of reference in contemporary art”.
The educational and didactic aspect of the exhibition is of great importance: the works and their presentation represent a source of inspiration and topic for discussion among students of all levels, including university. The event has always attracted steady numbers of teachers and students from many European countries, such as France, Germany, Belgium and Spain.
Various artists which have featured at Miniartextil in previous years have also taken part in the Venice Biennale: the Italian artist Marisa Bronzini (1938), Liang Shaoji from China (1999) and El Anatsui (2007) from Ghana, who came to Como last year, presenting an extraordinary tapestry made of aluminium and copper wire.
There is a catalogue of the event published, edited and prefaced by Luciano Caramel in Italian, English and French.
Guided tours for groups can be booked.
In 2008 the exhibition is set to go on show in other important Italian and foreign venues: Montrouge (7 – 24 February), the lively district of Paris known for the “Salon des Jeunes Créateurs”, which has been running for more than 50 years; Nule (Sassari, from 24 May), a small town in the Goceano area of Sardinia traditionally famed for its woollen textiles and carpets, which offers another part of the event as a whole, directed by Nietta Condemi De Felice: the Second Show of Art Carpets, designed by Sardinian artists and created by local weavers; and lastly Venice (August), at the Palazzo Mocenigo Museum dedicated to the history of textiles and costume.
Event planned and organised by Nazzarena Bortolaso and Mimmo Totaro for Arte&Arte.
Catalogue[ Edizione JMD-C
Entrance free
Guided tours for groups can be booked tel. +39.031.305621
Information for the public
Associazione Arte&Arte
Organising office: Paola Re
Tel/fax +39.031.305621
e-mail: artearte@miniartextil.it Press Office
Irma Bianchi Comunicazione