Exhibitions, installations, extended hours and free admission for all. What's new at the Pecci Center

From October 24, the exhibition spaces of the Luigi Pecci Center for Contemporary Art in Prato will host two new exhibitions and aninstallation: Protext! When Fabric Becomes Manifesto (Oct. 24, 2020 - Feb. 14, 2021), the major exhibition that aims to tell the story of fabric as a universal, artistic and communicative product through the works of nine international artists; Litosfera (Oct. 24, 2020 - Feb. 7, 2021), a dialogue between the works of Giorgio Andreotta Calò and Elena Mazzi and Sara Tirelli; and the installation of Raid, a work by Marcello Maloberti recently acquired by the museum. The museum headquarters also announces extended opening hours: from Oct. 28 it will also be open on Wednesdays and on weekends it will stay open an extra hour (Saturday and Sunday opening at 11 a.m. Great attention is given to the permanent collection, which can be visited with free admission for all.

“The role of our museum today is always that of a collector of energies for the territory and a safe social space for the community: only by strengthening Pecci’s link with Prato, enhancing its assonances and correspondences, and further tightening existing ties or creating new ones, can we restore the museum’s centrality,” said Cristiana Perrella, director of Pecci, adding: “In these difficult times, the Pecci Center wants to continue to be the home of those who love art and culture: a large and safe place, welcoming and inclusive, able to speak to everyone. Our mission is to continue to grow with our territory, to return to open ourselves, as soon as possible, to the whole world, And to do so now we want to give a significant signal of openness and at the same time of responsibility.”

With the exhibition Protext! When Fabric Becomes Manifesto, curated by Camilla Mozzato and Marta Papini, we aim to explore the role of fabric not only in critical debates about authorship, labor, identity, production and environmental change, but also as a medium in the representation of dissent. Banners, banners, t-shirts, handmade tapestries have given voice to spontaneous forms of protest: the review investigates how the most recent generation of artists uses fabric and its declinations as a transgressive artistic practice. These include Pia Camil, Otobong Nkanga, Tschabalala Self, Marinella Senatore, Serapis Maritime Corporation, Vladislav Shapovalov, and Günes Terkol.

The exhibition itinerary alternates between installations, sculptures, banners, tapestries, drawings, embroideries and opens with the site-specific environment created by the Greek collective Serapis Maritime Corporation consisting of a large mural painted on a curtain, which also overhangs the wall, and a series of large pillows made from recycled materials.

This is followed by Bara , Bara, Bara and Vicky’s Blue Jeans Hammock, Pia Camil ’s textile sculptures made from second-hand T-shirts and jeans (clothing produced in Latin America for the United States that returns to its places of origin on the routes of migration and global trade); tapestries The Leftlovers, Infinite Yeld, In Pursuit of Bling and Steel to Rust-Meltdown by Otobong Nkanga that highlight the historical impact and collective memory of the relationship between humans and nature; Vladislav Shapovalov’s Flags, a collection of flags used at textile mill workers’ demonstrations from the mid-nineteenth century and today, two of which are made up of many small fragments of fabric embroidered with the female names of female workers and sewn together.

Also, tapestries, videos, sketches and musical compositions by Günes Terko (the protagonists of her stories are women who adapt or refuse to adapt to the social and cultural transformations of contemporary Turkey). On display are some of her embroideries on gauze in a floating installation, along with Dreams on the River and Desire Passed by Land, flags produced during a participatory workshop.

The exhibition continues with Marinella Senatore’s colorful hand-embroidered banners from the series Forms of Protest: Memory and Celebration and fifty drawings from the series It’s time to go back to street; representations related to the imagery of black female bodies combined with colorful stitched, printed and painted materials that harken back to Tschabalala Self’s artistic craft traditions. At the end of the exhibition, a room dedicated to workshops, residencies and events to investigate the use of textiles in manifestations of dissent.

A video and a large environmental installation constitute the exhibition Litosfera: a Fragmented World (2016) by Elena Mazzi and Sara Tirelli, and Productive (2018-2019) by Giorgio Andreotta Calò. Curated by Cristiana Perrella, the exhibition is part of the research that reinterprets and interrogates the works of the permanent collection thanks to the dialogue with works from other collections; the exhibition of Raid, a work by Marcello Maloberti recently acquired by the museum, is evidence of the performance of the same name realized by the artist at the Pecci Center in 2018.

A Fragmented World and Productive arise from the suggestion of a journey to the center of the Earth, from the desire to represent forces and materials that over geological eras have shaped the planet.

Calò acquired, rearranged and catalogued about 2,000 linear meters of core drilling from the Sulcis Iglesiente area, part of the Carbosulcis survey archive. The stratigraphic horizon corresponding to the Productive level, between -350 and -450 meters below sea level, was then reassembled on the floor. The long cylinders of Productive make up a landscape that follows the stratigraphic succession. The work, which was presented in 2019 at the Pirelli Hangar Bicocca Foundation in Milan, entered the Pecci’s collection in 2019 thanks to a donation from the artist, who divided it among the member museums of AMACI - Associazione dei Musei d’Arte Contemporanea Italiani. On the occasion of the exhibition, for the first time a relevant part of it is reassembled, which includes, in addition to that of Pecci, the sections in the collection at MAXXI, GAMeC, MAMbo, FMAV, and those from the artist’s archive.

The video A Fragmented World is inspired by physicist Bruno Giorgini ’s Theory of Fractures and refers to a condition of chaos, unpredictability and transformation, using images of Etna, partly pre-existing and made for scientific purposes and partly shot specifically by the authors, with live sounds and sampling by musician Giuseppe Cordaro.

The performance Raid, from which the video in the collection was taken, was made in October 2018 at the Centro Pecci on the occasion of the 14th AMACI Day of the Contemporary and brings together some recurring themes of Marcello Maloberti’s production, such as the fascination with books, the relationship with the icons of art history, the combination of museum dimension and ephemeral actions, and the idea of a collective body composed of different people united by the same seemingly senseless gesture.

For more info: www.centropecci.it

Image: Exhibition set-up Protext! When fabric becomes a manifesto. Ph.Credit OKNOstudio

Exhibitions, installations, extended hours and free admission for all. What's new at the Pecci Center

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