Giulia Cenci at SpazioA

Artist: Giulia Cenci

Exhibition title: equal minds

Venue: SpazioA, Pistoia, Italy

Date: March 18 – May 6, 2022

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and SpazioA, Pistoia

SpazioA is proud to present on Saturday March 18, 2023, Giulia Cenci’s solo show equal minds, with a new project for the gallery’s spaces.

At 4.00 pm the same day, Pistoia Musei will host at the Auditorium of Antico Palazzo dei Vescovi the presentation and tease of dead dance, a documentary on the big installation by Giulia Cenci showed at the 59th Venice Biennale, The Milk of Dreams, curated by Cecilia Alemani.

This will be followed by a talk with the artist, moderated by the Pistoia Musei’s director Monica Preti, with Marta Papini, the Venice Biennial’s artistic organizer and Domenico Palma, the documentary’s director.

III

I sometimes wonder if that is what Krishna meant—
Among other things—or one way of putting the same thing:
That the future is a faded song, a Royal Rose or a lavender spray
Of wistful regret for those who are not yet here to regret,
Pressed between yellow leaves of a book that has never been opened. And the way up is the way down, the way forward is the way back. You cannot face it steadily, but this thing is sure,
That time is no healer: the patient is no longer here.
When the train starts, and the passengers are settled
To fruit, periodicals and business letters
(And those who saw them off have left the platform)
Their faces relax from grief into relief,
To the sleepy rhythm of a hundred hours.
Fare forward, travellers! not escaping from the past
Into different lives, or into any future;
You are not the same people who left that station
Or who will arrive at any terminus,
While the narrowing rails slide together behind you;
And on the deck of the drumming liner
Watching the furrow that widens behind you,
You shall not think ‘the past is finished’
Or ‘the future is before us’.
At nightfall, in the rigging and the aerial,
Is a voice descanting (though not to the ear,
The murmuring shell of time, and not in any language)
‘Fare forward, you who think that you are voyaging;
You are not those who saw the harbour
Receding, or those who will disembark.
Here between the hither and the farther shore While time is withdrawn, consider the future
And the past with an equal mind.
At the moment which is not of action or inaction You can receive this: “on whatever sphere of being The mind of a man may be intent
At the time of death”—that is the one action (And the time of death is every moment) Which shall fructify in the lives of others: And do not think of the fruit of action.
Fare forward.

-T.S. Eliot, The Dry Salvages, Four Quartets

Giulia Cenci (1988, Cortona, IT) graduated at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna, IT (2007-2012), received a Master of Fine Arts at St.Joost Academy, Den Bosch-Breda, NL (2013-2015) and she took part in deAteliers residency, Amsterdam, NL (2015-2017). Cenci participated in the 59^th Venice Biennale 2022, The Milk of Dreams, curated by Cecilia Alemani, she was one of the shortlisted artist for the Maxxi Bulgari Prize 2020 and she won the Baloise Art Prize at Art Basel 2019. Giulia Cenci lives and works between Amsterdam and Tuscany.

Selected solo shows: dry salvages, P/////AKT, Amsterdam, NL (2023); Hijia del aire, Museo Blanes, Montevideo, UY (2022); Giulia Cenci, curated by M.N. Farcy, MUDAM Luxemburg, Luxemburg, L (2020); Tallone di Ferro, curated by S. Risaliti and E. Francioli, Museo del Novecento, Firenze, IT (2021); Da lontano era un’isola, curated by C. Rekade, Kunst Merano Arte, Merano, IT (2019); ground ground, SpazioA, Pistoia, IT (2019); a través, Carreras Mugica (Hall), Bilbao, ES (2017); Offspring 2017 – DEEP STATE, curated by L. Almarcegui and M. Hendriks, De Ateliers, Amsterdam, NL (2017); Mai, Tile Project Space, Milano, IT (2014).

Group shows include: Reaching for the Stars. Da Maurizio Cattelan a Lynette Yiadom-Boakye – Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Collection, Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, IT (2023); Strange – Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Collection, Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, Siviglia, SP (2022); Shapeshifters, curated by Anna Johansson, Malmö Konstmuseum, Malmö, SE (2020); Metallo Urlante, Campoli-Presti, Parigi, FR (2020); 15^th Lyon Biennale / Jeune création internationale, curated by Palais de Tokyo curatorial team, Institute of Contemporary Art, Villeurbanne/Rhône Alpes, FR (2019); Comrades of time, curated by Whatspace, Hardspace, Basel, CH (2019); FutuRuins, curated by D. Ferretti, D. Ozerkov, with D. Dalla Lana, Palazzo Fortuny, Venezia, IT (2018); That’s IT!, curated by L. Balbi, MAMBO, Bologna, IT (2018); Figure di spago. Pratiche di narrazione, curated by Caterina Molteni, Fondazione Baruchello, Roma, IT (2018); Hybrids, curated by C. Driessen and D. Jablonowski, Lustwarande, Platform for Contemporary Sculpture, park De Oude Warande, Tilburg, NL (2018); Sessile, curated by J. Minkus, Clifford Gallery, Colgate Univesity, Hamilton New York, USA (2016); Disappointment Island, curated by Galeria Stereo, Griffin Art Space, Varsavia, PL (2016).