Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2002 03:31:23 -0600
Subject: Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art



Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art is pleased to present: 

Shirin Neshat, Curated by Giorgio Verzotti
Francesco Vezzoli, Curated by Marcella Beccaria

January 30 - May 5, 2002 
contact: press-AT-castellodirivoli.org

For full information please click below:


http://www.e-flux.com/decode.php3?cid=748



Shirin Neshat 
January 30 - May 5, 2002 
Curated by Giorgio Verzotti 
Catalogue by Charta, Milan 

Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art is devoting a large solo 
exhibition to the work of Shirin Neshat. Curated by Giorgio Verzotti, 
the exhibition includes four video installations, the most recent of 
which, Pulse, Possessed and Passage, are being shown for the first time 
in Italy, and a selection of photographic works. 

Neshat, of Iranian origin (born in Qazvin in 1957) but a resident of the 
United States for over twenty years, has chosen video and photography to 
explore themes of great topical interest, such as the condition of women, 
relationships between the sexes, social censorship, diversity and 
marginalization, violence and madness. Since the ^ÑNineties she has traveled 
to Iran to see her family, after twelve years of absence due to the political 
upheavals in her country. These visits have allowed her to maintain 
relationships with the Eastern world, witnessed from a different perspective 
from the progressive political and social change imposed on her country by 
the theocratic regime. 

Thus her poetics are focused on a reflection upon the relationships between 
her native culture and the Western culture to which she now considers herself 
assimilated. Influenced by contemporary Iranian cinema, particularly the 
work of Abbas Kiarostami, she creates a form of ^Óminimalist narration,^Ô as 
the artist calls it, but with great visual impact. The analysis that the artist 
achieves in her works is delineated with a lucid and at the same time poetic 
perspective. The four video installations are presented in the spaces on the 
third floor of the Castello, each installed in its own room. Rapture (1999, 
13^Ò), inspired by a tale by the Iranian woman writer Ravanan^Òpuri and shot on 
the coast of Morocco, consists of a black and white video projection on two 
facing screens. The video is devoted to the theme of sexual identity in 
relationship to opposing concepts of culture and nature in Islamic countries. 
Pulse (2001, 8^Ò30^Ô), shot in black and white, introduces the public for the 
first time to the interior world of the closed off, private space of an 
Islamic woman. The artist has called this video ^Óa black on black painting.^Ô* 
Possessed (2001, 9^Ò30^Ô) explores with black and white images the drama of 
madness, which represents chaos and the transgression of social order, and 
the marginalized condition that results. The actors in the video are the 
inhabitants of Essaouira in Morocco. 

For Passage (2001, 11^Ò30^Ô), shot in color in the desert of Morocco, Neshat 
collaborated for the first time with the American composer Philip Glass, 
who wrote the soundtrack. The video is dedicated to a meditation on the 
universal theme of death and on the ritual of burying or the return of the 
body to the earth, a motif in nearly all cultures. 

In the large room on the third floor of the Castello a selection of sixteen 
large-scale photographic works also will be shown. Both in black and white 
and color, these are taken from videos made between 1998 and 2001. 

The exhibition catalogue, published by Charta, contains critical essays by 
Hamid Dabashi, RoseLee Goldberg and Giorgio Verzotti, images of the exhibited 
works and biographical-bibliographical material. 

In conjunction with the exhibition, in March the Museo Nazionale del Cinema 
will show a collection of Iranian films from the ^ÑNineties, at the Cinema 
Massimo in Turin. Most of the films in this series, organized by Francesco 
Bernardelli, have never before been seen in Italy. 

* R.L. Goldberg, Shirin Neshat, exhibition catalogue, Castello di Rivoli, 2002. 



Francesco Vezzoli
January 30 ^Ö May 5, 2002
Curated by Marcella Beccaria
Catalogue by Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art 

Francesco Vezzoli drew the attention of international critics with his first 
videos, where the technique of embroidery becomes the cornerstone around which 
the artist creates veritable cinematic cameos. Invited to participate in the 
last Venice Biennale, he aroused particular interest, on the part of critics 
and public alike, with his performance, Veruschka Was Here, on the occasion of 
which he convinced the former model to perform live, playing herself in the act 
of embroidering one of the photos taken of her during the 1960s.

Vezzoli^Òs works, which include video installations and embroideries he has 
executed in petit-point, mix heterogeneous languages and genres, bringing 
together pop icons, auteur cinema, art history and costumes. To accomplish 
his works the artist involves movie stars who have experienced fame or jet 
set personalities who still live on in the collective imagination. The 
protagonists of his video works have included, for example, Valentina Cortese, 
Marisa Berenson shot as Edith Piaf, or Helmut Berger playing a role in Dynasty 
together with the artist.

Conceived for the spaces of Castello di Rivoli, Francesco Vezzoli^Òs exhibition 
includes his new double video installation, The End of the Human Voice and a 
series of embroideries made specifically for this occasion. The End of the Human 
Voice is taken from the theatrical text The Human Voice, written by Jean Cocteau 
in 1930 and brought to the large screen by Roberto Rossellini in 1948. The subject 
was inspired by the amorous delirium of a woman who, on the telephone, talks for 
the last time with the man who has just left her. As is characteristic of his work, 
Vezzoli mixes different genres in this case involving Bianca Jagger, famous former 
wife of the leader of the Rolling Stones and queen of the gossip columns, and 
today a committed civil rights activist. In one of the two video projections that 
make up the installation, Bianca Jagger, who has never acted, does so for Vezzoli 
and plays the dramatic role of the abandoned woman, a part the public knows through
the masterful interpretation of Anna Magnani in Rossellini^Òs film. Reversing the 
Neorealist version, the video is set in a luxurious and decadent atmosphere, but 
through a refined use of black and white, it intentionally carries on a dialogue 
with the film version.

In the other video that makes up the installation, Vezzoli himself plays the part 
of the faithless lover, creating for himself a role that doesn^Òt appear in Cocteau^Òs 
theatrical text or in Rossellini^Òs film version. Quoting the figure and works of 
Jean Cocteau, in a sort of literary self-portrait, the artist composes an almost 
static image, the bright colors of which present a Surrealist-like atmosphere.

A new series of embroideries included in the exhibition also are inspired by the 
life and works of Jean Cocteau. In dialogue with the historic spaces of the Castello, 
the artist presents them as ^Óthe room of the white book,^Ô composing them in a single 
installation that runs along the walls of the room.

The exhibition is accompanied by the first monograph dedicated to the artist, edited 
by Marcella Beccaria. 


Press Office, Castello di Rivoli Museo d^ÒArte Contemporanea
ph. +39.011.9565209 ^Ö fax +39.011.9565231, e-mail: press-AT-castellodirivoli.org
Press Office Consultant: Alessandra Santerini, ph./fax  +39.011.8123180, 
mobile +39.335.6853767, e-mail: santales-AT-tin.it

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