Peggy Guggenheim Collection launches Gen Z Art Storiez: under-25s tell art stories

Nine girls and boys, some high school or university seniors, some recent graduates, but all united by their young age (between 17 and 24), are the protagonists of Gen Z Art Storiez, a mini video series created by the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in collaboration with the editorial and creative team of ARTE.it, with the support of Lavazza, Institutional Patron of the museum. Alice C., Alice S., Enrico, Eugenia, Lorenzo, Maia, Marcello, Pietro, Sofia love music, photography, literature, art in all its forms and look at the world with curious eyes. Every Wednesday, starting Nov. 24, four videos will be shared on the museum’s web and social channels, as well as at www.arte.it and on Lavazza Official’s social channels, in which these young protagonists will tell, updating them, the themes of as many masterpieces in the museum: Landscape with Red Spots No. 2 by Vasily Kandinsky, The Empire of Light by René Magritte, The Shepherdess of Sphinxes by Leonor Fini and Dynamism of a Running Horse + Houses by Umberto Boccioni.

The initiative was created with the intention of co-designing with a team of young people a series of videos that, through a number of works, bring out themes in line with their interests, related to current events, and to which this group gives voice in order to get the message across with authenticity both to peers and to the whole audience. In the videos, they will be joined by four guests, chosen by the team, invited to relate to the art of Kandinsky, Magritte, Fini and Boccioni in a mutual exchange of ideas and opinions on themes and values arising from the works. Musician Lorenzo Senni, photographers Piero Percoco and Matteo Marchi, and writer and activist Carlotta Vagnoli will animate, video after video, the different conversations with the young people with the desire to provoke in the audience a confrontation and debate with respect to our daily living.

“Last year, during the lockdown, the museum began thinking about a number of activities aimed at young people between the ages of 17 and 24, with the desire to create programs designed for and by them that also included participatory planning, to listen to their words and make them protagonists through the creation of content,” said Peggy Guggenheim Collection director Karole P. B. Vail. “Gen Z Art Storiez saw, from the initial stages of its conception, the active participation of children of that age, with whom we initiated a real and direct dialogue that led us to create content together for them. Our desire was and remains to establish a conversation with young people in order to create initiatives and projects that interpret their freshness, but which, with their questions and reflections, can also tell art the way they like it.”

Faced with Kandinsky’s abstract landscape, Lorenzo Senni with Pietro and Enrico address the theme of mutual influence between artistic disciplines, and in particular the relationship that binds art and music, which is as fundamental for the Russian artist, author of The Spiritual in Art, as it is for the musician, who says how visual art has always influenced his music, so much so that it made him coin terms like pointillistic trance. In contrast, the relationship between dream and reality, surprise and enchantment, is central in the dialogue between Piero Percoco, Marcello and Sofia, in front of Magritte’s surrealist masterpiece The Empire of Light. The dreamlike and surreal dimension, central to the Belgian artist’s work, is also present in the photographer’s visual imagery. Two topical and urgent issues of contemporary living, such as gender equality and the emancipation of women’s role beyond gender stereotypes, emerge from the dialogue between Alice C., Eugenia, and Carlotta Vagnoli, in front of the enigmatic female figure, the protagonist of Leonor Fini’s painting The Shepherdess of the Sphinxes. Finally, at the center of Boccioni’s work, Dynamism of a Running Horse + Houses, an emblem of the Futurist avant-garde, is the speed and movement on which Lorenzo, Alice S., and Matteo Marchi, a sports photographer for years on the ground of the great challenges of the NBA, focus his shots precisely on that dynamism, for him synonymous with freedom.

The collaboration between the Peggy Guggenheim Collection and the youth team will continue throughout 2022 with new projects designed with and for them, such as the temporary exhibition Surrealism and Magic. Enchanted Modernity, which will open to the public on April 9, 2022, and related Public Programs.

At this link you can see the first video dedicated to Vasily Kandinsky’s Landscape with Red Spots No. 2.

Photo by Matteo De Fina

Peggy Guggenheim Collection launches Gen Z Art Storiez: under-25s tell art stories

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.