August 28, 6 pm., CREA – Cantieri del Contemporaneo, Venice, Italy
Following on from the visual essay conceived for Umbigo #88 by the artist Anne Marie Maes, based on the exhibition Matter of Kinship – Fundação Casa de Mateus, the opportunity has arisen for the presentation of this issue and #89 at the CREA – Cantieri del Contemporaneo space in Venice, as part of the finissage of CYFEST 15: Vulnerability, in which the artist participates with the installation Sensorial Skins.
The two issues, on the theme of Biophilia and Apocalypse, will be presented on August 28 at 6:00 p.m., followed by a talk on Art, Technology and Ecology and The Importance of Publications in the Art Ecosystem. Participants include Anna Frants (artist, curator and director of CYFEST), Elsa Garcia, António Néu and José Pina (founders and associate editor of Umbigo), Teresa de Albuquerque (director of Fundação Casa de Mateus) and artists Anne Marie Maes and Thomas Braida (who is featured in a visual essay in issue #89).
CYFEST 15: Vulnerability
CYFEST, founded by a group of independent artists and curators, is one of the world’s largest media art festivals. Since its launch in 2007, the initiative has been a platform for reflection and dialogue between different visual languages and technological industries, forging a space open to exchange and intersections between the artistic and scientific communities. With a nomadic ethos, the festival’s projects – including installation works, sound art projects, educational programmes and more – travel to several major cultural institutions around the world.
The 15th CYFEST in the 2023-2024 biennium is entitled Vulnerability, a curatorship emphasising the (anti)fragility of biological, social and cyber spaces. Led by artist and curator Anna Frants, topics such as the scientific imagination of memory, asemiotic writing and the post-natural emerge in the itinerant exhibition series which, after having passed through Yerevan (Armenia) and Miami (USA), premiered at CREA in Venice in the spring.
Together with works by Tuula Närhinen – with her multidisciplinary Drop Tracer project -, the Where Dogs Run collective – a scientific art pioneer – and Mariateresa Sartori, Anne Marie Maes’ Sensorial Skins installation is a collection of skins grown on bacteria, with different sizes, colours and thicknesses, ultimately embodying a suppleness and softness resembling organic textiles. The works emphasise the sculptural potential and interfaces between the human and the non-human, the macroscopic and the microscopic, blurring and complexifying the traditional notions of agency or even authorship. The pliability of the skins made by the Belgian artist invites one to get to grips with the material world and these living fabrics, preserving in their folds the memories of time and flavours.
CYFEST 15, including Anne Marie Maes’ Sensorial Skins project, is open to the public at the CREA in Venice until August 30, 2024.
