PNEUMA with Christian Fogarolli: Digital-only Exhibition Opening
Pneuma Exhibition
+++ Unfortunately, due to COVID-19, we are unable to welcome you at STATE Studio in person. However, we want to invite you to be part of the PNEUMA experience through www.state-studio.com and our social media channels. Our PNEUMA journey tackles the stigmatization of mental illness and the consequent social exclusion in times where we become increasingly aware of the value of individual freedom. We started this experience through several European countries one year ago and would like you to join us.
PNEUMA will be showcased online starting Friday, March 27, from 7 pm through interviews, footage, and virtual tours in the coming weeks. +++
Credit: Christian Fogarolli, 2020, Pneuma
Credit: Christian Fogarolli, 2020, Pneuma
Winner of the Italian Council project (2019), Christian Fogarolli’s Pneuma focuses on the immateriality and intangibility of mental illness by analyzing various geographical and cultural contexts, questioning the stigma and categorization created by political, corporate and state systems. Fogarolli’s work is an attempt to bring to light the entire spectrum of subjectivity behind diagnoses, which otherwise risks remaining untold.
The Pneuma project set itself apart thanks to its intent to unhinge normative attributions of mental deviance and forms of taxonomy canonized by modern medical theories and western archival methodologies. Beginning at Law 180, which reformed the psychiatric system in Italy in 1978 and the Helsinki European Declaration of 2005 on mental health, Fogarolli developed a preliminary research and subsequently maintained a collaboration with some of the major European psychiatric institutions, establishing a firm relationship with the people who live and work in these places. He seeks to challenge, thanks to their help, the classification processes of mental disorders and the consequent marginalization of the individual.
His various travels, research residencies, collaborations in ten different countries and immersion into multiple European realities led the artist to the conception of a project which consists of several immersive works, ideated and put together as a result of having cooperated so closely with people in care, medical personnel and researchers in different fields. The countries involved are Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, France, Belgium, Holland, England, Romania, Czech Republic.
Leading this groundwork, Fogarolli has developed an exhibition path, which encompasses multimedia, environmental installation, that interacts with glass sculptures and a video piece, created in collaboration with brain research institutes such as the CIMeC - Center for Mind/Brain Sciences, Rovereto and the King's College in London.
Credit: Christian Fogarolli, 2020, Pneuma, research phase with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) on the brain of the artist at CIMeC - Center for Mind / Brain Sciences, Rovereto / Trento. Courtesy of the Artist.
The project will be presented in different places: at STATE Studio Berlin in Berlin, at MARe
Museum in Bucharest, at Schwarzescafé at Löwenbräukunst in Zürich and at MAMbo - Museo
d’Arte Moderna di Bologna.
Fogarolli encourages visitors to focus on the details of the articulated universe of mental health, revealed through the collaboration and experiences shared between patients and the artist.
