AlbumArte and IILA | International Italian-Latin American organization
present
PARADISO
Marlon de Azambuja, Elena Mazzi, Estefanía Peñafiel Loaiza
Juan Esteban Sandoval, Óscar Santillán
curated by Rosa Jijón
Inauguration Wednesday 7 March 2018 at 6.30 pm
Open to the public until April 21, 2018
AlbumArte, independent non-profit space for contemporary art and IILA-Italian-Latin American international organization, present in the spaces of AlbumArte in via Flaminia 122 in Rome, PARADISO curated by Rosa Jijón, a collective exhibition with four Latin American artists living in Europe and an Italian artist similar to their poetics: Marlon de Azambuja (Brazil), Elena Mazzi (Italy), Estefanía Peñafiel Loaiza (Ecuador), Juan Esteban Sandoval (Colombia), Oscar Santillán (Ecuador).
There have been numerous international artists invited to these years at AlbumArte and they came from various countries, not only European, bringing together with their works, a look that came from different realities, producing very interesting visions. With regard to artists from Latin America, in 2015 AlbumArte hosted a very young Colombian artist in the exhibition of the finalists of an international competition, which then won the second prize, María Jimena Herrera. In 2017, however, the meeting with the Mexican artist Teresa Margolles, who brought her precious and suffered testimony, about the violence suffered by many women in some areas of Mexico. This is the first time, however, that from that part of the world, so vital and in transformation, we welcome four artists together and we thank the institutions that supported this project: the IILA – International Latin American American Organization and the Embassies of Brazil, Colombia and Ecuador in Italy.
The curator of the exhibition, Rosa Jijón, who is also an artist and comes from Ecuador, now living in Rome, where she is the cultural secretary of the IILA – Istituto Italo Latino Americano, for this exhibition takes inspiration, as she herself cites, from the various concepts that refer to Paradise: from the canticle of Paradise in Dante’s Divine Comedy, where it is sacred, from the paradise of Josè Lezama Lima, where she is sensual and from the lost Paradise of John Milton, wanting to introduce and overturn part of the concept of an ideal place.
The works on display evoke the word Paradiso referring to the concept that the colonizers had of Latin America, a virgin territory where nature was wonderfully inviolate and lush, but enriching its meaning and, through their work, expanding the vision in what that place has become today, through an artistic point of view inspired by nature, which, through its problems, signals the problems of the whole society all over the world.
Today Latin America is a leaven of ideas and thought, interpreted here by the works of these five artists who present an exhibition made up of various languages, linked together by the ethical political intolerance of the arbitrary use of the environment and of incongruous exploitation. of human resources, represented through a strong and delicate language together and very poetic. On show the videos, the installations, the mixed technique works and the works realized with natural finds, talk about this. All the interventions in the exhibition Paradiso, make us reflect on where we are going and how we are making the journey, after the globalization of the economy and the alteration of the social, economic, sociological and political fabric of nations and cities. The four Latin American artists on show, all boast significant international experience and collaborations with major museums such as the Paris Jeu de Paume or the MUAC of Mexico City as well as being present in prestigious collections such as CAAM and Helga de Alvear, while the Italian debutant Elena Mazzi, who is enriching her curriculum of valuable prizes and residencies, in 2016/17 she was an artist tutor at the Spinola Banna foundation in Turin.