Francesco Jodice
Spectaculum Spectatoris
16 November 2012–13 January 2013
Bildmuseet
S-90187 Umeå, Sweden
Spectaculum Spectatoris is the Italian artist Francesco Jodice’s archive of today’s museum visitors, a visual encyclopedia of the people who give life to art in museums worldwide. Francesco Jodice’s video installations consist of hundreds of human portraits displayed in scale 1:1.
In 1734 the Capitoline Museums opened in Rome as the first art museum by today’s definition. Since then, hundreds of millions of visitors have admired the works of art in museums around the world. In retrospect, there are few traces of these visitors, their experiences and feelings.
In Spectaculum Spectatoris, Francesco Jodice places the museum visitor in focus. The project started at Museo del Prado in Madrid 2011. Now, Jodice continues his work making the museum visitor’s role and visibility present worldwide. When the new Bildmuseet opened in May 2012, Francesco Jodice was on site to portray its visitors. The videos selected for the Umeå archive are now displayed as installations on the 4th floor (until December 9) as well as in the form of projections on the museum windows (until January 13). In Umeå, Spectaculum Spectatoris premiered in connection with the light festival Höstljus and parts of the video installation were featured in the Glass House on Town Hall Square, 16–18 November.
Francesco Jodice (b. 1967) lives and works in Milan. His work spans architecture, photography and video in which he explores the involvement and location of the human being within the urban space. Jodice was a founder of the interdisciplinary collective Multiplicity and his work has been exhibited worldwide. In 2008 he worked with the United Nations on the 60th anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights. Francesco Jodice’s works have been shown at Documenta (2001); La Biennale di Venezia (2003); Liverpool Biennial (2004); MUSAC, Leon (2005); ICP Triennial of Photography and Video, New York (2007); Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (2007); São Paulo Art Biennial (2006); Tate Modern, London (2006); MAMbo, Bologna (2010) and Queensland Art Gallery, Australia (2012). Jodice is a professor of Urban Visual Anthropology and Photography at NABA (Nuova Academia di Belle Arte) in Milan.
