The poetics of movement requires similar bodies that share the same mystery and above all something of the same need for authenticity and presence.
I come from the sea, from dance and choreography.
I move in contemporary art dancing towards the user and specifically in relational and participatory art through the body.
My installations are physical works in which something of a forgotten primitive movement is experienced.
For “Experience collection”, a numbered collection of relational works, a team of similar artists, different each time, is brought together to form a group of “Angels” who unfold the concept of experience in a series of drawn actions.
For San Severo al Pendino in Naples I created CARE, a space of presence and care that contains within it a device in which the body that heals unfolds.
The action is entrusted to the constant presence of bodies in a choreography of gestures over the long time of the day and the 15 days.
Andreana, Christian, DISCOllettivo, Chiara, Silvia, Alessandra: they are the mirror in which the users will look at themselves.
They are artists encountered in the long time of bodily practice, between performances, workshops, bars and follies.
A community of poetic and mystical bodies with whom I share fragments of a puzzle that continually changes image: the body.
I am you.
Thank you thank you thank you Angels!
CARE is a site-specific work for the church of San Severo al Pendino. The visual research and photographs printed on fabric stem from a desire to bear witness to the restoration of the church, which was stripped of its marbles and then restored in the late 1990s.
I dialogued with Ilaria D’Atri, a visual artist, to record fragments of the church marbles and restore movement to their veins in a series of about 300 photographs.
With Ilaria we entered the intimate texture of the church to make these all different shots. The desire is to devote the same attention to architecture as one does to a body: bones, limbs, tendons, vessels, organs.
The marbles are a series of 286 photographs divided into 4 colors (red, yellow, green and pink), printed on 30 x 30 cm pieces of cotton like handkerchiefs. Each handkerchief serves a body: the head and hands are wrapped in the handkerchiefs, which are changed from time to time for each deposition. In them the weight of the body settles, restoring the cloth to its former value as a relic.
For San Severo al Pendino we made a fabric portal signifying the crossing of the usually wide-open threshold of the church. The portal is a printed curtain measuring 3.20 x 3.45 m, where the shadow of a large body filters the light.
With Ilaria D’Atri we started working on my first Neapolitan performances at the Capodimonte Museum {http://valeriaapicella.fr/apparizioni.html} {http://valeriaapicella.fr/segreto.html} and since then a desire has arisen to push our encounter beyond the performative act and give life to fabric prints of images representing the body and a symbolic gesture.
For the Marosi Festival 2022 we created Mass in the Abyss, our first large print (4.5 x 4.5 m) that symbolized the gesture of prayer as a “trait d’union” between the volcano and the sea, between heaven and earth. The canvas suspended in the air was then immersed in the waters of the Mediterranean, sinking.
For CARE, we conducted a shooting session in the studio at puntozerovaleriaapicella to find the image of the portal. The diaporama that follows traces the cues investigated: the giant projection on the body of the church marbles, the overlapping of sheet, body and projection, the immersion of the body in clouds of smoke, between pillowy blankets and rays of light.
“CARE is listening to the self, to the other, and to that world of sound that inhabits and surrounds us in every moment.”
I had a desire to introduce the viewer inside an experiential universe. But a viewer entering a space is not always so willing to participate, to get involved. How do you create pre-experiences that put the body in trust and then let go?
During the creation of CARE, I began to record, in a kind of body recording, the sensations emerging from my body as I experienced the deposition through the posture of the dead man. It was there that the evidence of a sonic dimension of the underworld (“sottomóndo”) appeared to me.
In Stromboli, I entered into dialogue with a sound artist I hold in high esteem, Vittoria Assembri. The dialogue with Vittoria opens me to the desire to search for an “undersound” that allows the viewer to immerse himself, by means of the Silent device (wireless headphones), in an individual and collective sound dimension.
Vittoria and I create in dialogue a sound fragment of CARE in the form of two tracks. One track travels with the viewer freely, accompanying him or her to the first steps in the church; the second track complements the video-installation The Sleepers Behind the Altar and composes together with the images that feeling that constantly eludes us: the body immersed in sleep co-participates in the movement of the world. “Eppur ferma la vita si muove.”
Undersound by Vittoria Assembri and Valeria Apicella s made with the testimonies of: Nadia Carlomagno, Andreana Notaro, Alexander David Smith, Aicha Traore, DISCOllettivo, Cyril Béghin, Valeria Apicella.
The graphic design for the project was shared with Linus Bonduelle, a young artist and graphic designer based in Rotterdam. Linus encountered our work in 2022 with the Word Body Art project (a series of interviews with international artists about their relationship to the body) and has been collaborating with puntozerovaleriaapicella on specific projects ever since.
For CARE he is responsible for the graphic creation of the website, logo and communication elements. In the dialogue emerged the idea of a cotton thread as a founding element from the fabric we act in the work. The cotton thread draws the logo of the installation.
Also on the project’s communication team are Tamara Vecchione and Serena Ricci.
Serena has been collaborating with puntozerovaleriaapicella for years. She takes care of social and institutional communication for CARE. Tamara follows the work while at the church to create its social content and assists Linus in building the website. Linus and Tamara created CARE’s website by imagining giving back to the creation work with backstage moments, but also in the form of a logbook.
Aicha Traore and Alexander David Smith are the youngest figures in CARE. They are the ones who invest the role of welcoming and managing the public during the 15-day installation. Their presence is a call to future generations so that we can share with them the value of caring and listening and return it with strength and enthusiasm
