Premio Furla at Arte Fiera
Premio Furla, organized by Fondazione Furla, is one of the most influential prizes promoting young and talented Italian artists. Chiara Fumai, the 2013 winner, was nominated during the recent Bologna Art Fair.
Chiara Fumai has created a site-specific installation called “Chiara Fumai reads Valerie Solanas”. The artwork presents a video performance where Chiara re-proposes the Scum Manifesto of Valerie Solanas, an American writer and activist of the feminist movement, who in 1968 attempted to shoot Andy Wharol . The video is settled in a room where panels are covered up with diagrams, which emphasize the violence of the text. In the video Chiara reads the Scum Manifesto to convey in a provocative manner the idea of social inferiority of the male with the rhetorical tools of an authoritarian political or military persuasion.
This video-performance is the results of a long research-process started at dOCUMENTA 13 (Kassel) adapted by Chiara for the occasion, delving into the power and violence of the rhetorical process and gender conflict. As usual, a preview of the winner’s work will be at the Fondazione Querini Stampalia (Venice) during the 55 Venice Art Biennale.
This year the artists were selected by different couples of curators: Chiara Fumai was selected by Stefano Collicelli Cagol and Bart Van der Heide, Tommaso De Luca by Ilaria Gianni and Alice Motard, Invernomuto by Filipa Ramos and Elena Filipovic, Davide Stucchi by Francesco Garutti and Yann Chateigné Tytelman, and Diego Tonus by Vincenzo Latronico and Fanny Gonella.
“Add Fire” is the title of the exhibition chosen by the patron of the edition Jimmie Durham, the famous American artist, whose role has been covered in the past by many other influential artists such as Christion Boltasky (2011) and Marina Abramovic (2009). Mr Durham explains that the title’s message has to be found in the philosophic definition of the term “fire”, which should be welcomed as an invitation for the artist to explore his own artistic evolution, searching fire and passion.
