Giulia Cenci at P/////AKT

Artist: Giulia Cenci

Exhibition title: dry salvages

Venue: P/////AKT, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Date: January 15 – February 19, 2023

Photography: Charlott Markus / all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and P/////AKT, Amsterdam

V.What the Thunder Said

After the torchlight red on sweaty faces
After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stony places
The shouting and the crying
Prison and palace and reverberation
Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience

Here is no water but only rock
Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding above among the mountains
Which are mountains of rock without water
If there were water we should stop and drink
Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think
Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand
If there were only water amongst the rock
Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit
Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit
There is not even silence in the mountains
But dry sterile thunder without rain
There is not even solitude in the mountains
But red sullen faces sneer and snarl
From doors of mudcracked houses
If there were water

And no rock
If there were rock
And also water
And water
A spring
A pool among the rock

The Artist’s Library

The Artist’s Library is a growing collection of titles that have, in one way or another, been relevant to the artist’s practice. They will be on view during the exhibition and become part of the P/////AKTSALON collection of books afterwards. Guilia Cenci highly recommends:

– T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land and Other Writings, Modern Library 2002
– Peter Godfrey-Smith, Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life, HarperCollinsPublishers 2018

About P/////AKT

P/////AKT is a non-profit exhibition space for contemporary art that organizes and facilitates large scale solo presentations through which the audience gets the opportunity to gain insight in the thinking space of the artists.

P/////AKT provides a platform for exceptional, emerging artistic talents, who distinguish themselves through their unique and authentic language and who are capable of giving a different view on the current way of thinking. They are stimulated to work out new developments and are given the opportunity to present their work to a relevant audience. Furthermore, P/////AKT always asks the artists to produce new work that relates to the specific nature and dimensions of the given space and to present their own mental space as an overall presentation within the given context.

Giulia Cenci, dry salvages, installation views and details, P/////AKT, 2023. Photographs by Charlott Markus, courtesy of P/////AKT Amsterdam