Chiara Capellini: The Elephant and the Blind Men

The exhibition The Elephant and the Blind Men– The Matter of the Void, organised by Zuecca Projects in collaboration with Rupture Arts & Books, presents a selection of paintings by Chiara Capellini, as the culmination of the artist’s research and meditation on the concept of emptiness and indeterminacy in physics.

The exhibition includes a selection of books (the main source of the artist’s research) in dialogue with the artworks on display. A lecture on the concepts of matter and void in theoretical physics will be held during the opening period of the show. Following the Venice event, the project will also be presented at the Rupture bookshop in Paris and Marseille.

The exhibition is named after an ancient parable about a group of blind men who have never come across an elephant before and who learn and imagine what the elephant is like by touching it. Each blind man feels a different part of the animal’s body and, based on their limited experience, describes the animal in different ways. The moral of the parable is that subjective and limited experiences lead to different and partial interpretations of phenomena.