Artists: Ludovica Anversa, Edoardo Caimi, Marina Cavadini, Davide Dicorato, Oliviero Fiorenzi, Nicola Ghirardelli, Edoardo Manzoni
Exhibition title: Al Lupo, Al Lupo
Curated by: Riccardo Angossini
Venue: Spazio Contemporanea, Brescia, Italy
Date: September 13 – October 26, 2024
Photography: Images copyright and courtesy of the artists, The address and Spazio Contemporanea, Brescia
The fusion between contemporary artistic practices and shamanism in the exhibition “AL LUPO, AL LUPO” represents an interesting example of how cultural tradition, the study of nature and ancestral spirituality can meet contemporary artistic language to create new forms of expression. Artists such as the well-known Joseph Beuys, supported by the performative acts of the Fluxus group and followed, between the 1960s and 1970s, by the Italian Arte Povera artists, have been interested in shamanic practices or have drawn from them to investigate the hidden depths in the imagination of the surrounding reality.
The wolf, a key figure and guide within the initiatory path, an evocative symbol of the wild and mystery, merges with the practices of the seven artists present in the exhibition to accompany us on a stratified path that seeks to probe the depths of the unconscious and the irrational by posing reflective ideas inherent to nature, ecology, the body and phenomenology.
The reference to the figure of the wolf can therefore be interpreted in different ways: as a symbol of the wild and uncontrollable nature that hides within us, as a metaphor for the struggle between rationality and instinct, but also as a representation of otherness and diversity. Contrary to the stereotype that links the myth of the wolf to modern civilization, which from Aesop* onwards made it an emblem of evil and ferocity, the figure that the wolf manifests stands within the exhibition design as a totemic animal, as it was in many ancient tribes and civilizations, a symbol of fertility, protection, courage, the founding myth of Rome but also a bearer of success and victory alongside the god.
The image of the wolf unhinged by the synonym of voracity and individualism that man projects onto himself. The sacredness that binds the shaman to an animal that has been able to survive extinction.
The wolf, as well as the artist, becomes, in a profoundly alienated and disturbing society like ours, a clearing of the human soul, a metaphor of light and truth, a guide for an initiatory journey to discover an intimate and secret identity. It becomes a figure balanced between “healer and cultural mediator” capable of introducing us through the change of his state of “artistic consciousness” in a different condition of awareness and reflection.
Seven artists**, intent on inserting themselves into new horizons of thought in the nescience of habit and the atrophy of sensation, through the innate desire to connect different philosophical ideas give life to performative actions, therapeutic rituals and dreamlike images.
The works on display can mean a gesture of revolt, an attempted act of liberation from the media exploitation that emerges in the contemporary panorama.
