March 1–May 31, 2021
Bologna
Italy
Curated by Caterina Molteni
Dear you,
Under the current conditions of semi-isolation into which the world population is forced, six artists have been asked to reflect on the boundaries and potential of individual intimate space, observing intimacy not only as a painful loneliness, but as a place for a possible and flourishing self-determination.
This project aims to look at introspective reflection and its practice as a place of transformation which conceives identity as a constantly evolving dimension. A possible source of political and social revolution as well as being personally and emotively transformative.
It seeks to re-evaluate emotional conditions and experiences such as fragility and emotional sensitivity, enhancing their generative features. It incites new forms of love, eroticism, friendship and loyalty, reflecting on possible emotional and physical resources capable of expanding our spectrum of self-representation and desire (personal and collective).
Its name is Dear you, because it is for you—the reader.
Dear you is structured through six works by artists whose practices are strongly linked to poetry, writing and performance. Postal mail will be used as the way to communicate and receive artworks.
Dear you expressly refers to love correspondence to accentuate the strong intimacy evoked by the reception of a letter. In particular, to underline how postal correspondence is capable of feeding dynamics of care, thanks to the ability to transform a distant voice into something tangible and close.
Hamja Ahsan (London, 1981), Giulia Crispiani (Ancona, 1986), Dora García (Valladolid, 1965), Allison Grimaldi Donahue (Middletown, 1984), Ingo Niermann (Bielefeld, 1969) and David Horvitz (Los Angeles, 1982) will send you six letters—one from each artist—in the form of poems, short stories, scores for performative acts, or pieces that are performative devices in and of themselves. These works dialogue with the creative dimension of language, looking both at reading as a transformative experience, and fiction as a fertile ground to represent desirable conditions. At the same time, artists will reflect on fundamental issues of our times such as the loss of physical contact and its repercussions on the emotional life of individuals, the weakening of our shared social life, and the need to create new relationships and strategies of care that go beyond the digital experience.
If you subscribe to the project you will receive a letter, at home, every two weeks from March until May 2021,
hoping to give you an instant of brilliance,
All the best,
CM
