Rome, Cristiano Carotti's armed pedal boat symbolizes fears of xenophobic populists

The work that Cristiano Carotti (Terni, 1981) is exhibiting from Nov. 17 to Dec. 22, 2018, at the White Noise Gallery in Rome will surely cause discussion: Carotti’s exhibition, titled Same Beach, Same Sea and curated by Eleonora Aloise and Carlo Maria Lolli Ghetti, in fact presents to the public the work Seagull SS17, a prototype for a popular self-defense tool, an armed pedal boat that transforms the icon par excellence of the Italian on vacation at the Riviera (the pedal boat, in fact) into a crude instrument of popular self-defense. The work intends to ask how it was possible for the Mediterranean to return to public perception as a symbol of fear and threat, the emotions, that is, that the mare nostrum aroused in the sailors of a time before modernity.

Carotti, an artist who moves between painting, sculpture, installation and video, with Stessa spiaggia, stesso mare (Same Beach, Same Sea ) wants to add another piece to his research on social dynamics, investigated in their most extreme drifts through the study of the archetypal power of the symbol within communities. In particular, the works in Stessa spiaggia, stesso mare are part of the work related to the study of the Mediterranean and of the most recent migratory flows: taking up some motifs of classical myths, re-actualized according to his own poetics, Carotti wants to push the audience to reflect on the discombobulated reactions that these phenomena provoke in public opinion and on the new threatening meaning of the sea in the imagination of Italian and European society. During the classical period, the legends surrounding the Mediterranean basin featured terrible monsters and incredible sea creatures that ruled and protected it: a sea voyage aboard a trireme was certainly a dangerous affair, and figures like Scylla or Charybdis served to keep sailors away from the most difficult areas. Today, words like “invasion” and “conquest” have taken the place of “shipwreck” and “reel” as the new vocabulary of sea-related fear. “And so,” reads the exhibition’s presentation, "a pedal boat, a national-popular icon of the coveted vacations, of the most carefree vacations, becomes, in the hands of Carotti who arms and militarizes it, the clumsy and ridiculous instrument of those who are caught up in the specious and gallows fear of migrants. Of those who exult at the chilling phrase ’they should be sunk at sea.’" A work that sums up much of the meaning of this exhibition, the armed pedal boat titled Seagull SS17 is an installation that can show the double face of the new xenophobic phenomena linked to populist movements: a crude and inappropriate yet dangerous and threatening tool. The perfect medium for the ordinary citizen about to face a sea once again full of mythological monsters.

To the creation of a new contemporary mythology inspired by the classical era, think instead, more appropriately, the eighteen ceramic sculptures (Scylla I-XVIII, 2018) of different shapes and colors (but united by threatening and terrifying expressions) depicting creatures with the head of a wolf and the body of a sea serpent, instead of the ancient tritons and torpedoes. Or the sculpture, displayed on the lower floor of the White Noise Gallery, depicting a contemporary Charybdis, half mermaid and half bodybuilder, conceived as if it were a Roman wineskin recovered from the seabed during an archaeological find. All the way to the pictorial work Shipwreck of the Birds, a visual vortex inspired by Théodore Géricault’s famous painting The Raft of the Medusa, which encloses in a hellish waltz all the figures of this new mythology in which mythical creatures have lost their role of warning to become grotesque symbols of pure fear.

The exhibition, with free admission, opens Tuesday through Friday from 12 to 8 p.m. and Saturday from 4 to 8 p.m. For info: www.whitenoisegallery.it.

Pictured: Cristiano Carotti, Seagull SS17, prototype for popular self-defense tool (2018; metal, plastic, enamel, 165 x 390 x 220 cm)

Rome, Cristiano Carotti's armed pedal boat symbolizes fears of xenophobic populists

Warning: the translation into English of the original Italian article was created using automatic tools. We undertake to review all articles, but we do not guarantee the total absence of inaccuracies in the translation due to the program. You can find the original by clicking on the ITA button. If you find any mistake,please contact us.