The artists are in quarantine, but the art is not. In this exceptional situation, there are those who take care of them too. On Instagram, of course, the favorite social network of the art world, and where, as never before, Italian museums and cultural institutions have come into play in the production of content to maintain active contact with the public. After all, someone also had to continue taking care of the art, and creative solutions are not lacking.

An example of this is the #ARTISTSINQUARANTINE project, born from an idea by Giada Pellicari, a young Paduan art consultant and curator: an Instagram profile becomes the space for a virtual exhibition, which comes to life in a few hours after the release by the Prime Minister’s Office of the Prime Ministerial Decree on March 8th which, due to the worsening of the Coronavirus emergency in some areas of the country, identified Lombardy and others as “red areas” 14 provinces of Piedmont, Veneto, Emilia-Romagna and Marche.

In short, #ARTISTSINQUARANTINE is configured as a reaction to this delicate phase of uncertainty, characterized on the one hand by social isolation and on the other by a condition of hyper connection. The non-existent exhibition brings together 12 Italian artists who live and work in those first red areas and who as such – in a subtle game of reality and fiction – become “correspondents”, called to offer a cross-section of the contemporary art scene domiciled within these territories.

The Instagram-specific online exhibition is an ongoing project: without involving any physical movement, it will be constituted one post per day, for the entire quarantine period, until April 3rd. “The exhibition” reports the creator and curator of the project in the press release “tries to be an answer to this historical moment of great criticality and great economic uncertainty, where art and the people who produce it are even more at risk and more fragile “.

Venice is represented by Alvise Bendente, Andrea Grotto, Corinne Mazzoli, Maria Morganti, Lucia Veronesi and Sophie Westerlind; for Padua there is Antonio Guiotto; and also Andrea Chiesi for Modena, Marco Gobbi for Brescia, Kamilia Kard for Paris and Milan, Mara Oscar Cassiani for Pesaro and Urbino, Vera Portadadino for Milan.

The works, almost unpublished or specifically created for the initiative, vary from traditional media to digital technologies: from portraits with intimate and calm tones made with pastels and oil painting by Andrea Grotto and Sophie Westerlind, up to the digitally drawn photographs taken by Kamilia Kard in the two weeks of isolation spent in her Parisian apartment, the works posted so far are testimony to an atmosphere of alienating domestic captivity and a surreal condition of temporal suspension, now no longer the prerogative of the first red areas but of the entire nation .

The games are interrupted, as well as the incessant and frenetic going of our daily routine, that concrete basketball, frozen in the act of bouncing, blocked a few centimeters from the ground, by Antonio Guiotto seems to tell us. We just have to discover the diary of the artists in quarantine day by day, but always following the peremptory advice of the video meme of the artist Mara Oscar Cassiani: stay at home.

Laura Guarnier

Info:

#ARTISTSINQUARANTINE
curated by Giada Pellicari
Artists: Alvise Bittente, Mara Oscar Cassiani, Andrea Chiesi, Marco Gobbi, Andrea Grotto, Antonio Guiotto, Kamilia Kard, Corinne Mazzoli, Maria Morganti, Vera Portatadino, Lucia Veronesi, Sophie Westerlind
10 March – 3 April 2020
Instagram groupshow @artistsinquarantine
#ARTISTSINQUARANTINE