The Sleeping Muse
September 12, 2020
On Saturday, September 12, 2020, Fondazione Mudima presents the performance The Sleeping Muse, a new Sogno (Dream), curated by Raffaella Perna, created by the artist Reverie specifically for the location: the stage of Palazzina Liberty, historical building in Milan.
From 4 to 8pm, Reverie will be on stage.
The artist will sing the texts of the dreams received from all those who answered her invitation, starting from January 2020, including those from the lockdown period, collected by means of a dedicated online platform on her website.
This will be a piece that is non-intrusive for the space, but rather, “purist.” The fundamental elements will be a voice, a body, and the imagination of the public present at the venue.
Dreams are intangible, and in the same way, singing is an ephemeral experience, and it will be given a new life to both in a choral work that Reverie will create after her performance using the material gathered in the course of this collective piece.
The title refers not only to Brancusi’s masterpiece, a recurrent dream in Reverie’s poetic approach, and to the work made by the artist herself, representing her own personal vision (with rose) of the “Sleeping Muse,” a one-off piece in bronze made from a lifecast of her face, with the addition of direct-cast roses, but it also, and above all, relates to the nocturnal phase of truth in dreams and the sense of marvel and wonder elicited by the revelation of one’s hidden, sincere side.
Reverie’s muse sings while she sleeps and dreams.
Reverie’s voice is living, “instinctive” and natural, and precisely for this reason it represents a collective, cathartic tool. It does not aspire to the perfection of “bel canto” singing, neither does it utilise the classic lyrics universally recognised as masterpieces: rather, it is made of the dreams, nightmares, memories, lights and shadows in the lives of all those who would like to take part: “In The Sleeping Muse, Reverie works with the materiality of the voice used in its raw identity, as a sculptural, bodily element, putting the artist’s physical experience into contact with the dreams of the people involved. Sculpture, vocal performance and dream activities combine to form a work imagined as a process of collective awareness,” comments curator Raffaella Perna.
Sogno 2: The Sleeping Muse is another component related to Reverie’s recent publication librosogni, printed by Skira (an uncensored collection of the artist’s dreams dating to 2019, written using her distinctive “cacography” technique, along with a group of hitherto unseen works, atemporal “physical dreams”), and to other projects which, like this, are part of a wide-ranging cycle of choral performances beginning with Sogno 1: l’archetipo del sé committed by Fondazione VOLUME! in Rome in November 2019.
Reverie
Born in Tuscany, with home address in Vinci, Reverie lives and works in Milan, dedicating every moment, action and rose of her life to art. At the moment, she is working on dreams as the main theme of her research. Each of her collective performance starts and is concluded by a series of physical artworks, some of which are present in important private collections.
Amongst her solo public performances:
Futura Poesia, London, Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, with the publication of an artist’s book, November 13, 2018. On occasion of “Futura Poesia”: the exhibition Fenice in the offices of Artvisor, London (November 14, 2018–January 14, 2019).
C.U.M. Confessione Unica Memoria Vinci, Colle di Ceoli, from dawn to dusk, July 11, 2018.
PourOntani Venice, OPEN 20, September 1, 2017.
Rinascimento ipersensibile, Florence, Palazzo Strozzi, July 20, 2017.
Tempo zero, Milan, Fondazione Mudima, May 23–25, 2017.
Sposalizio con Arte, Prato, Archivio Carlo Palli, July 6, 2016.
