Conference Grant Reports: Elisa Giardina Papa at the Venice Biennale
We're so pleased to be able to support our graduate students in sharing their cutting-edge research at the premiere conferences in their field. Elisa Giardina Papa received a Fall 2021 grant to create the video and ceramic installation "U Scantu”: A Disorderly Tale which will be exhibited at the Venice Biennale 2022. Read more from Elisa in her own words below:
I'm really excited to share with you that my new video and ceramic installation "U Scantu”: A Disorderly Tale will be exhibited at the Venice Biennale 2022.
The 59th International Art Exhibition, curated by Cecilia Alemani and titled The Milk of Dreams will take place from 23 April to 27 November 2022 (pre-opening on April 19-22). My work will be at both the Arsenale and the Forte Marghera (Polveriera austriaca) venues.
“U Scantu”: A Disorderly Tale (2022) reimagines the Sicilian myth of the donne di fora (“women from the outside and beside themselves”). Described as both magical and criminal, the donne di fora were said to possess both the feminine and masculine; the human and the animal; the benevolent and the vengeful. This video installation envisions the donne di fora as a gang of teenage “tuners” who ride through the utopian city of Gibellina Nuova (Sicily) on bikes customized with disruptive sound systems. The narrative voyage of the “tuners” is interspersed with poetic text and visual motifs from a 19th century collection of Sicilian fairy tales, Giardina Papa’s fragmented childhood memories of songs and stories told by her grandmother, and archival material from the Inquisition trials of the 16th and 17th centuries that criminalized women accused of being a donne di fora. Accompanied by artisanal sculptures of related fantastical imagery, “U Scantu”: A Disorderly Tale repurposes the magical, ritualistic, and unruly as forces that generate an imagination beyond predetermined categories of humanness, chronological time, and mythological womanhood.
Photo credit: ELISA GIARDINA PAPA “U Scantu”: A Disorderly Tale, 2022 - Video and ceramic installation 12 min.