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7/10/2011

Alina Mnatsakanian and Laura Solari

MACT/CACT Arte Contemporanea Ticino, Bellinzona

The concept of belonging posits a fundamental questioning of the very concept of History itself. The Leitmotiv in the exhibition opening at the CACT – Contemporary Art Centre in Canton Ticino – tackles this vital issue, since the fluid nature of historical awareness sets our very sense of belonging to the world of choices and of actions on the knife-edge.

As a locus of vision and of psychological relation to space par excellence, art remains a crucial mirror for reflecting upon analytical interpretations of the irrational and the subjective. The invited artists – Alina Mnatsakanian (1958) and Laura Solari (1971) – have set their hands to this theme, whether by virtue of personal experience or in a more analytical vein.

The Armenian artist Alina Mnatsakanian retraces the thread of History and of her personal story, presenting three works of installation. Her House on Wheels (2000), which opens the entire exhibition, is almost autobiographical in its reference to the diaspora and to the material errant journeying that develops into a redefinition of an intimate, cultural identity. Here, the skeleton of a house mounted on four wheels and inhabited by memories is flanked by a large-scale projection onto the wall, showing images from the artist’s own past.
The two video works One Person Died (2011) and Purification (2011) offer a subjective reading of the artist that reminds the observer of the cold systematic calculation at work in every case of genocide and of the process of purification, which Mnatsakanian identifies in water, as the element that washes away all evil, all filth and all immorality.

For her part in this twin one-woman show, Laura Solari is also presenting works that re-occupy space and modify its layout, impacting in parallel with Mnatsakanian with regard to her approach to the exhibition’s theme. Her works are more analytical, less closely linked to her own cultural and religious identity. Nevertheless, Solari generates moments of hyper-realism with such sound installations as Nature Sounds (2011) and Vanitas (2011) and photography works like Déjà-vu (2011), as well as by the way she makes her presence felt in general in the concrete dimensions of representation, adding her own subjective truth to reality and conjugating them together.

For her work Rekall (2011), Laura Solari will be assisted by Plinio-Natale Cemento-Müller, with whom she recently completed an artistic-contextual project for Arspolis #1, curated by Pier Giorgio De Pinto.

Saturday 8 October starting at 17:30 with the opening the free website Rekall.ch by Laura Solari and Plinio-Natale Cemento-Müller will be online for the public. In the site – wherever you are – the visitors are cordially invited to put second hand advertisements of old or recent memories you wish to sell, to buy, to exchange or simply to offer as a present.

Both of these artists use a highly politicised language, whose tones are sometimes militant and social, although reminiscence, memory and imagery are and remain components anchored firmly to their artistic expression.

Reflections by Mario Casanova, 2011 [translation Pete Kercher]

Vernissage__Saturday 8 October 2011 at 5.30 p.m.

Centro d'Arte Contemporanea Ticino - CACT
via Tamaro, 3 - Bellinzona
8 October– 13 November 2011
Fri-Sat-Sun__2.00-6.00 p.m.
Admission: 5 CHF

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