tranzit. ro/ București invites you to the exhibition:
“Un libro di specchi” – Valentina Vetturi
25 February – 16 March 2014
Opening: Tuesday, 25 February 2014, 7 pm
Curator: Raluca Voinea
Venue: tranzit. ro/ București, Gazelei Street, no. 44, sector 4, Bucharest
Following an artistic residency in Bucharest, Valentina Vetturi stages in an exhibition her research around the topic of the ghostwriter. For some months she has been collecting stories of ghostwriters from different countries, working for politicians, journalists or even students.
A figure so easily recognizable in our society, the ghostwriter is frail and cynical, opportunist and indifferent, empathic and intelligent. Whether responding to personalities’ lack of time or skill, helping actors to remember and those who have to act to overcome stage fright, writing books, memoirs, speeches or film scripts, ghostwriters are the mercenaries who cosmeticize private memory and thicken the fictional skin of official history.
They are the mirror against which their commissioners can better themselves and they are shadows, ready to disappear when they are not needed anymore. For a proper payment, they can take the shape of their commissioner’s dreams or desires. Ghostwriters are the true representatives – pragmatic, discrete, lonely – figures of our accelerated present.
In the exhibition realized for the space of tranzit. ro/ București, Valentina Vetturi takes us into the potential universe of a ghostwriter, she cuts a few stripes from his or her life and lays them down before us, composing a cubist portrait, impossible to decipher completely, just like the character it depicts. The artist is not judging and not idealizing, instead she exposes not a calculated writing machine (that we might expect to find) but a complex figure, with doubts, anguishes and dreams that could be ours, someone who’s making a living simply from being able to read people and write words better than others.
Valentina Vetturi was born in Reggio Calabria in 1979. Her works investigate the relationships between performative practice, writing and the disruptive elements of everyday life. Recent projects/shows include: Cattedrale (Swiss Institute, Rome, 2013), Una Giornata (AMACI/MAXXI, Rome, 2012), Orchestra. Studio #1 (MACRO, Rome, 2012), La Funzione (Fondazione Sandretto, Turin, 2012; Mestna Gallerija, Nova Gorica, Slovenia); Una Mostra (Viafarini, Milan, 2012), Un Viaggio (Spazio Norbert Salenbauch/ Galleria Marilena Bonomo, Venice, 2011), The Playground (Premio LUM, Bari, 2011), La Macchina che produce il Tempo (Auditorium, Rome, 2012; Galleria Marilena Bonomo, 2010).
She won the prize Mario Razzano (2010) and she took part in art residencies among them: FAAP- Fundaçao Armando Alvares Penteado (San Paolo, Brazil); Transient Space Summer Camp/ Uqbar (Palanga, Lithuania); Viafarini (Milan).
The exhibition was built together with the help of: Eduard Constantin, Simion Constantin, Florin Dumitru, Viorel Iancu, Anca Benera & Arnold Estefan.
The artist would like to thank to the ghost writers who shared their stories, as well as to the following: Lino Sinibaldi, Vlad Morariu, Marilena Bonomo, Daniela Voso, Pia Livia Di Tardo, Luciana Cortellino, Henri de Riedmatten, Diana Marincu.
Raluca Voinea and Valentina Vetturi thank vessel for having made possible their encounter.
The one-month residency of Valentina Vetturi was made possible by a grant from nctm e l’arte (Italy) and it was organized by tranzit. ro/ București.
“Un libro di specchi” is part of the programme Fiction, Rhetoric and Facts, organized by tranzit. ro in 2012-2015.
The exhibition can be visited from Wednesday till Friday, from 3 to 6 pm or by appointment.
For more information write to:
raluca.voinea@tranzit.org
or call:
Tel.: 004 031 482271
Mobile: 004 0728 503012
www.tranzit.org
ERSTE Foundation is the main partner of tranzit.ro.