Elisabetta Di Maggio: Mapping the Air

Curated by Chiara Bertola.

This exhibition revolves around a theme central to Elisabetta Di Maggio’s artistic practice: the organic shapes, in resonance with nature, environment and human communication networks. Her works reveal the close ties that exist among webs, circuits, grids, structures, and meshes that belong to very different worlds, but are all part of the sphere in which we lead our everyday lives.

When we think of circuits or webs, examples that spring to mind include the complex venations of leaves, the tracery of lines on human skin, the routes of subway trains, or the intricate shape of a nerve cell: upon close examination, these seemingly disparate things echo each other in many ways. Drawings of the synapses in our brains, for instance, resemble the roots and branches of trees, as meticulously detailed as illustrations in an old botanical treatise. The delicate filigrees of the plant world and the channels of the body suggest connections, reminding us of the intricate networks of human communication.

Truth rests on maps drawn in the air. It does indeed seem to be “mapping the air,” so difficult to detect are the threads and circuits in which life on earth unfolds. This means everything which sustains it or which governs the activities of nature and humanity tends to be organized into pathways and networks that cannot be seen or perceived, but ultimately prove to be the key structures supporting and linking the energies and entities of the world.

Elisabetta Di Maggio’s entire project, Mapping the Air, is thus a metaphorical reflection on our existence as parts of a whole, fragments of a natural world that, at the microcosmic and macrocosmic level, is constantly shifting and changing due to the extraordinary fecundity of its laws.

Elisabetta Di Maggio (Milano, 1964) lives and works in Venice. She works with a variety of materials, from tissue paper sheets, to small or huge vegetable leaves, soap, porcelain, and with different surfaces, including the plastered walls. In this way her research becomes a metaphorical reflection on our human condition. Di Maggio's works have been exhibited in national and international venues, including NMWA Washington DC (2020), Museo Maxxi, Roma (2019), Arter Museum, Istanbul (2019), Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venezia (2017) and are held in international museums, public and private collections, including Magazzino Italian Art Foundation (Cold Spring NY), Arter Museum (Istanbul).

Chiara Bertola (Turin, 1961) lives and works in Venice. She is Curator of Contemporary Art Program at the Querini Stampalia Foundation in Venice since 2000. She was artistic director at the Hangar Bicocca in Milan from 2009 to 2012 where she curated the international experimental project: Terre Vulnerabili – a growing exhibition. She was curator of the Venice Pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale, 2007 and has curated many exhibitions both in Italy and abroad. Among other: Danh Vo (2022), Roman Opalka (2019), Elisabetta Di Maggio (2017), Jimmie Durham (2015), Christian Boltansky (2011), Hans Peter Feldmann (2012), Ilya & Emilia Kabakov (1989, 2003, 2012), Michelangelo Pistoletto (2013, 2000), Mona Hatoum (2009, 2014, 2015), Kiki Smith (2005), Lothar Baumgarten (2001), Joseph Kosuth (2000).

Artist and curator talk: February 10, 2023, 4pm

Book launch: April 13, 2023, 7pm
Conservare il Futuro/Conserving the Future.
By Chiara Bertola. 25 years of exhibitions at the Querini Stampalia Foundation
With the support of Italian Council.

Special edition of the C& Center of Unfinished Business
Join us for the opening of this special edition of the C& Center of Unfinished Business on February 9, 2023 and a special event day with a panel at ifa Gallery Berlin and party at ACUD on March 18, 2023, to celebrate C&’s 10th anniversary.