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Artist in Residency

30.11.-12.12.22
Rebecca De Marchi
Back to the Small Stage
artistic reserach residency

Rebecca De Marchi as part of her artistic research-based project “Back to the Small Stage”, will be in residency at M.Bassy, partner of the project.During the residency period an event to share insight on the content of the research, will take place. “Back to the Small Stage” is developed through an itinerant residence between two continents, and is part of Rebecca De Marchi’s artistic, theoretical and practical enquiring on the epistemological issue of how human beings make experience and knowledge of the Earth and consequently how Worlds are conceived, used and inhabited, conducted with a decolonial posture, through the lens of academic and material-spiritual cultures. The research is developed over a year from autumn 2022, at the invitation of Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art (SCCA Tamale, founded in 2019 by the Ghanaian artist Ibrahim Mahama) in dialogue with the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology KNUST in Kumasi (GH) for an in-depth study on traditional cultures, the contradictions of modernism and the discourse on contemporaneity. The activity also takes place through the partnership with the Leibniz-Archive of Hanover (DE) and M.Bassy in Hamburg for moments of shared activities and presentation of the research and the support to consult the Leibniz’s manuscripts (from whose Monadology the title of this project draws inspiration) and deepen the theme of incompossibility; the Associazione Isole (IT) to collaborate in the publication of the project and to promote the presentation of the results in Italy.

In the development of the research, in collaboration with KNUST as an expanded and shared pedagogical process, Rebecca De Marchi will delve through meetings, interviews and presentation, both the reflections of the French philosopher Jacques Rancière on aesthetics and politics; and the relationship between technology, animism and reparation elaborated by the Cameroonian historian and political theorist Achille Mbembe. The carrying out of the research activities and the presentation of the results in the various locations in collaboration with the organizations mentioned above is an expression of an artistic elaboration embodied in the transpecific and generative dialogue with the multiple contexts, people, communities and essences. The nomadic dimension is an integral part of a research that takes the fold in allegorical terms to complicate historical and geographical linearity, interrogate gender and subjectivity issues and reopen the ontological basis of knowledge. This research is preparatory to the production of a corpus of artworks on the emergence of other possible common sensible worlds (echoing Rancière) that should be understood as collective reflection devices effective also beyond the artistic communities. The residence process potentiality resides on to activate the circularity of knowledge by the means of contemporary artistic practice on a horizon of planetary repairing and ecosystem-based alliances (referring to Mbembe).

Project supported by the Italian Council (11th edition, 2022), the program aimed at supporting Italian contemporary art in the world promoted by the Directorate General for Contemporary Creativity within the Italian Ministry of Culture.

Rebecca De Marchi

Rebecca De Marchi is an artist and curator based in Kumasi (Ghana) and Torino (Italy). From 2003 to 2016, she curated the public art programme Eco e Narciso (www.ecoenarciso.it), conceived by herself as an artist and sponsored by the Provincia di Torino. From 2017 to 2022, she has curated the socially engaged project Saluzzo Rural Happening conceived by herself and supported by Garuzzo Foundation. De Marchi is a member of Con MOI Association –a community of intention composed of people with different backgrounds and origins– that, among other activities, produced the movie Joy, directed by Daniele Gaglianone, whose preview took place at Biennale di Venezia in 2017. In 2018 a solo show of her artwork Ecumene Adele took place at Davide Paludetto Gallery in Turin. Lo Sai? (2021) and A Place Where Only Salt is Lacking (2022) solo show took place in Kumasi (Ghana). Her artwork Lo Sai? has been part of the BIENALSUR 2021 “A New Order. Breaking Down Borders” exhibition. Currently lecturer at Fondazione Pistoletto – Unidee Academy in Biella, De Marchi has been visiting professor at NABA in Milano and ABADIR in Catania. She has produced many publications, from the Eco e Narciso’s catalogues to texts for the monographic catalogue Io, Luca Vitone and the book Working Geographies, among others. She is currently the recipient of the Italian Council international research grant for artists in collaboration with SCCA in Tamale as a main partner. De Marchi graduated with a Master’s Degree in Architecture at Politecnico di Torino and earned a Master in Curatorial Studies in Contemporary Art, Università di Torino and Contemporary Art Museum Castello di Rivoli, in 2004. Currently, she is a PhD Candidate at the Painting and Sculpture Department, KNUST in Kumasi, and part of the blaxTARLINES collective with which, in 2022, has participated at Mixer, the exchange programme with the Städelschule, Frankfurt, and documenta fifteen taking part to the Gudskul in Kassel. In 2022 she participated at Ofkob art residency in Ghana.