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XII CAIRO INTERNATIONAL ART BIENNALE

 

XII CAIRO INTERNATIONAL ART BIENNALE
December 12, 2010 | February 12, 2011
http://www.cairobiennale.gov.eg/

XII Cairo Biennale Curatorial Concept
The Diversity of All and Everything Possible by Ihab El Labban, Artistic Director

Text by Vittoria Biasi – 3rd December 2010

Cairo’s Biennial exhibition of art is the oldest International show in Northern Africa. Farouk Hosny – Minister for the Cultural Heritage of the Arab Republic of Egypt – will open the twelfth edition of the Biennial Exhibition of Art on 12th of December 2010 at the Cairo’s Palais d’Art. Works of nearly hundred artists are displayed. They come from forty countries all over the world: Algeria, Brazil, Canada, Croatia, Korea, Italy, U.S.A., Venezuela, Philippines.

Carmine Siniscalco – director of Studio S “ Contemporary Art in Rome”  – arranged the participation of three Italian artists  to the exhibition: VALERIA CORVINO, PAOLO GUIOTTO AND RITA MELE. They propose important pathways of Italian Art  through different languages. The internationally well known Carmine Siniscalco says that artistically they like to look at forms, images and colours in a different manner or fashion. Each one of them have attended regular art studies but have evolved their own experiences and experimentations. The participation of  two women artists and one man demonstrates the great prominence of the role plaid by the women in the Arts – not only in Italy today.

The curator presenting the artists writes that:

PAOLO GUIOTTO – born 1934 in Venetian land – is a great designer, painter and sculptor as well as a lecturer and a writer. His works can be found  in New York’s Museum of Modern Art and Florence’s Galleria degli Uffizi. His works in Cairo are five new black silk threads put into the canvas transforming the original drawing in a conceptual art work. Still nowadays he is considered  an innovator because of his Art research  that involves his extraordinary skill and great spirituality.

VALERIA CORVINO shows five large-sized paintings – oils on canvas –recalling the paintings of the old masters of great Italian Tradition, executed with an amazing technique that aims at the inner research of beauty and balance. She also studied photography with Mimmo Iodice, one of the most renown Italian photographer, with this explaining the peculiarity of her compositions.
Valeria Corvino’s works are carried out  with traditional technique but the subject of her compositions reveals the great interest of the artist into photography. She also realized some videos and doubles images works that are photographic reproduction of her paintings.

RITA MELE – born in Asmara and living in Frosinone – created  the essentially conceptual installation “A Proposal”: 180 thin white pasteboards (measuring each one cm. 19×26, totalling a surface of cm. 400×236) with pasted letters in relief  and different elements inserted to compose the word LOVE translated into almost every language in the world. This work is the result of her research about “white on white” and it can be modified changing the position of the various cards: it becomes a performance where the only “silent sound” is due to the repetition of the word LOVE, the sole brick able to support the weight of  that bridge among people which is called PEACE.

The director of  the Biennial Art is a young renown Egyptian sculptor Ehab El Laban, charged for the second consecutive time. His efficient assistant Dhalia Moustapha organized the Italian artists in Cairo. The Italian Institute of Culture  in Cairo was  essential  for the realization of the project. It is directed by Patrizia Raveggi and her deputy Simonetta De Felicis and attaché Redenta Maffettone.

The Italian artists and curator extend their heartfelt thanks to all of them.

Vittoria Biasi

Vittoria Biasi is a Contemporary Art Historian and an Art Critic. She is a Contemporary Art History professor at Florence’s Academy of Fine Arts. After her humanities graduation she concerned herself with the Theory of White following Hubert Damish at Paris *Ecole des Haute Etude*. Close to artists who interprets the monochromy of white she devoted herself to the theoretical criticism realizing national and international shows and exhibitions with a particular attention to the Eastern culture. She attends conferences as a lecturer about the white and its light. Among the others: Lumière(s) En Usage, Pèrigueux 1998. From 1996 on to 2000 she realizes the events of  LIght of Art for Art’s sake at Rome, Parma and Padoa. For Homo Sapiens (1) first she translated Henry Meschonnic from French, publishing some excerpts from Modernité (2). Some other publications: State of White (3); In Line with Light, Light for Light’s sake (4). She wrote for the magazine Lighting. Through a text of her she is attending Fabrizio Crisafulli’s Theatre of Places. The theatre as a place and the experience at Formia (1996-1998), **G.A.T.D*., Rome, 1998. She looked after the exhibitions for the book of artist in Italy and abroad.

(1) Homo Sapiens No. 3, Teseo Publisher, Rome, 1999;
(2) Modernité, Gallimard, Paris, 1994;
(3) Stati del Bianco, Stampa Alternativa, 1994;
(4) Accordi di Luce. Luce d’arte per l’arte, Teseo Publisher, Rome, 1998

Translated by Salvatore Rollo at Salvatore_rollo@fastwebnet.it

Salvatore Rollo is a holder of a diploma from a Business school. Just before the end of 60s he works as accountant in a large firm in the Republic of South Africa for 2 years. When in Italy he goes to England and lives over there for 4 months. Back in Italy  he matriculates Faculty of Sociology at Urbino. In the meantime he works in hotels all over Italy and at the end with a Shipping Firm  for the U.S . Govt. At last he finds a new job for a navigation company. He will work in the range of maritime navigation, shipping agency and  passengers and cars transportation for nearly 23 years.

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