We have been wearing face masks and respecting social distancing measures for over a year now all over the world and it is maybe normal to feel as if our senses were numbed.
Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto hopes to reawaken them with an installation that has just opened at the Sala delle Capriate in Bergamo's Palazzo della Ragione. Developed in collaboration with Bergamo-based Galleria d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea (Modern and Contemporary Art Gallery – GAMeC), "Mentre la vita ci respira – SoPolpoVit'EreticoLe" (through September 26) consists indeed in a multisensory installation made with local materials that hopes to heal the wounds of visitors.
Neto usually works with tensions and weights, populating his spaces with crocheted installations, at times similar to tents where people can rest and meditate.
"SoPolpoVit'EreticoLe" has a sort of organic shape, reminiscent of a sun, a cell or an octopus with tentacles moving in different directions. The tentacles are also reminiscent of Neto’s boa, a recurrent symbol in his works, hinting at mother earth, Gaia, and therefore at life.
The circle in the centre also calls to mind a navel is conceived as a symbol of life (the initial syllables of the Italian words for some of these themes – "sole – sun", "polipo – octopus," "vita – life," and "eretico – heretic" – form the title of the installation).
Yet maybe visitors will be more interested in the practical aspects of the exhibition than in its intricate symbolisms: the installation is indeed a bed, a resting place on which you can lie down or sit and share experiences while taking a break and a deep breathe as well.
The installation is made with locally sourced materials – stones and straw, plants, spices, and medicinal herbs – in some cases these materials are placed in handmade bags using the crochet technique, so as to stimulate all of the five senses.
So there is a combination of themes from sustainability and ecology to crafts but also spirituality and rituals (the "heretic" reference in the title of the installation is inspired by those women living in this area in the Dark Ages who were accused of witchcraft and perspecuted as heretics because they lived in close contact with nature).
There are also some garments in the exhibition, conceived as new clothes that might help us connecting with the natural world, with the spirits of our ancestors and with the non-Western epistemologies that Neto has been studying for quite a few years now.
Since the mid-1990s, Ernesto Neto has explored social spaces and the natural world often inviting visitors to his exhibitions to engage in physical interactions and sensory experiences.
Quite often he created spaces with textiles (he mainly employs knitted and crocheted cotton for his works, but in his practice he has also used polyamide, polypropylene and polyester) and organic materials, inspired by his fascination for ancient cultures.
In his crocheted tent-like cells made with colourful nets at times reminiscent of hammocks, people can reconnect with a spiritual dimension and with other human beings while being surrounded by other structures such as crocheted spirals, rings, disks and tubes. Usually these tents have a sort of nucleus representing the place where the seeds of life are planted (think of the navel-like space in the exhibition in Bergamo).
Neto's installation in Bergamo is symbolical as Lombardy was the Italian region hit the hardest by Coronavirus last year and the city was the epicenter of the tragedy, so the new work is for the artist almost a way to gift local visitors with a space where they can find peace and reconnect with nature.
The event also marks an sort of anniversary as it takes place twenty years after the artist’s debut participation at the Venice Biennale (2001), curated by Harald Szeeman, and anticipates the exhibition "Nothing Is Lost. Art and Matter in Transformation" that will take place at Bergamo's GAMeC this Autumn and a solo event that will kick off at Rio de Janeiro's Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel/Carpintaria gallery later on this summer.
Image credits for this post
1.
Ernesto Neto. Drawing for "Mentre la vita ci respira – SoPolpoVit'EreticoLe", Palazzo della Ragione, Bergamo, 2021
2 and 3.
Installation view, "Mentre la vita ci respira – SoPolpoVit'EreticoLe", Palazzo della Ragione, Bergamo, 2021
Photo: Lorenzo Palmieri
4.
Installation view, Não tenha medo do seu corpo, Galeria and Galpão Fortes Vilaça, São Paulo, Brazil, 2012
Photo: Eduardo Ortega. Cortesia [Courtesy] Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel, São Paulo/Rio de Janeiro.
5.
Installation view, Rui Ni / Voices of the Forest, Kunsten Museum of Modern Art Aalborg, Aalborg, Denmark, 2016
Photo: Anders Sune Berg. Courtesy of Kunsten Museum of Modern Art Aalborg.
6.
Installation view, Children of the Earth, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, Los Angeles, USA, 2019.
Photo: Flying Studio. Courtesy of the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles
7 and 8.
Installation view, Ernesto Neto and the Huni Kuin: Aru Kuxpia | Sacret Secret, TBA21 – Thyssen-Bornemisa Art Contemporary, Vienna, Austria, 2015
Photo: © Jens Ziehe. Courtesy of TBA21 – Thyssen-Bornemisa Art Contemporary.
9.
Installation view, Mother body emotional densities, for alive temple time baby son, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, 2015
Photo: Pablo Mason. Courtesy of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego
10.
Installation view, Boa, Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki, Finland, 2016
Photo: Petri Virtanen. Courtesy of Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma.
11.
Installation view, 57th International Art Exhibition, VIVA ARTE VIVA, La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy, 2017
Photo: Dario Lasagni. Cortesia [Courtesy] La Biennale di Venezia
12.
Ernesto Neto, Untitled, 2021, Cotton voile and wooden knobs, 193 x 226 cm
Photo: Eduardo Ortega. Courtesy Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel, São Paulo / Rio de Janeiro.
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