Marinella Senatore: Piazza Universale / Social Stages

Queens Museum is hosting the first US show by the Italian artist which is featuring major projects the artist has been developing since 2009 across Spain, France and Italy.

The exhibition, curated by Matteo Lucchetti, runs around the concept of “the universal square”, a public space where different communities meet, and as an embodiment of an ideal, universal space where future communities can be envisioned collaboratively. The Italian title “Piazza Universale / Social Stages” is combined with an English phrase which is not a translation: this gap is where the exhibition unfolds, in its attempt to translate or transform the artist’s live, participatory and community-engaged projects which unfolded in Europe and elsewhere into a new and unique experience within the Queens Museum galleries.
The spaces of the museum themselves turn into theatre, cinema, or television production sets, or a setting for poetry or dance class, offering the works of Senatore as “stages for” and “stages of” a collective social becoming—tools for individual growth and collective empowerment.