! ! Bride ! ! ! Nebojša Despotović, Onorina Frazzi, Resi Girardello,Iosif Hadjikyriakos, Cristina Treppo, John Volpato, Dania Zanotto Curated by GLORIA VALLESE
! within:
La Reggia Portatile (“A Portable Royal Palace”) Four events for Caterina Cornaro (1454-1510)
! ! ! Larnaca, Medieval Fort, March 26 to April 17, 2011 Vernissage: March 26, at 6 p.m. Opening hours: All days, 9-17
! Organized by:
Larnaca Municipality with the cooperation of
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www.creamcollection.it
! ! ! ! ! ! Iosif Hadjikyriakos, Onorina Frazzi and John Volpato join CREAM, a group of young artists from different countries who were trained at the Academy of Fine Arts of Venice, to celebrate the 500 anniversary since the death of Caterina Cornaro, the Venetian noblewoman who was Queen of Cyprus at the end of the fifteenth century.
! Their site-sensitive exhibition, which transforms by means of paintings, sculptures and installations the inside space of the Medieval Fort in Larnaka, concludes a cycle of four art events which have been held throughout the jubilar year 2010/11 in the main places of Caterina’s biography: Venice (two locations), Asolo, and Cyprus (Larnaka). The four exhibitions revolved around the idea of La Reggia Portatile ("A Portable RoyalPalace"), symbol of the luxury and frailty which connotated Caterina’s existence.
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! ! ! ! In Larnaka’s Medieval Fort, a fine piece of military architecture set in a wonderful seascape, CREAM and friend artists lay out an exhibition of paintings, sculptures and sounds about a particularly happy segment of Caterina’s life: the moment in which, coming in Cyprus for the first time in as an eighteen-years old bride, she got acquainted both with the husband she had married by proxy four years earlier in Venice, and with the wonderful landscape of the Mediterranean island. She fell in love with both, and when, seventeen years later, she was compelled to leave Cyprus to go back to Italy, she even recreated in Asolo a garden with plants brought from Cyprus, to feel forever around her the intense smell of a Mediterranean wood.
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In the historical truth, Caterina arrived in 1472 in Famagusta, not in Larnaca, and she was never established in a small, severe and all-military building like the Larnaca Fort. But the CREAM artists do not look for an historical literal reconstruction; they love the symbolic in the idea of the young bride arriving in Cyprus and finding a home which is not actually a home, a place which was idyllic yet all set for war. This idea allows them to develop/display a series of works, many of which new and expressly conceived for this site, focusing on some very up-to-date themes in contemporary art: such as, the psychological components of “making home” provisionally somewhere, between different spaces and cultures; or the idea of “soft” sculpture, made in cloth and threads instead than in marble and bronze; or of a new approach to contemporary art, friendly and narrative instead of hostile and abstruse, as it is so often the case. In the four different presentations of La Reggia Portatile, the connection with a real-life character and with historical events builds up a narrative link, though tenuous and freely interpreted, which gives the public a key of access to the art being displayed.
! The first venue of La Reggia Portatile took place in May 13-17, 2010, in Venice, at the Palazzo delle Prigioni, the State Prison of the Serenissima adjoining Palazzo Ducale. There Iosif Hadjikyriakos, a young artist living between Larnaca and Venice, displayed paintings, drawings taken in 2009/10 during his travel through Cyprus, Venice and Asolo, and a sculpture, a “dress-prison” inspired to the black state dress worn by Caterina on the day of her forced departure from Cyprus. In Venice, Nuova Icona / Oratorio di San Ludovico (August 27, September 12, 2010), a liturgical space of the XVI century, the portable royal-palace was displayed folded, packaged, ready for a departure. The site-sensitive installation created there by the CREAM artists (Cristina Treppo, Dania Zanotto, Nebojsa Despotovic) and friend (Iosif Hadjikyriakos) focused on Caterina’s early years; a still childish world of portraits and imagined faces, the fantasy of a sea voyage and of an exotic kingdom in the Mediterranean. A parallel presentation in the City Museum of Asolo near Treviso (August 21 - September 19, 2010), the town where Caterina moved her court after her forced return from Cyprus in 1489, focused instead
on the maturity of the Venetian queen, on her sumptuous life
saddened by sudden losses and forced departures.
In Asolo,
the four artists interacted with Caterina’s personal objects preserved in the
Museum, in a dialogue between past memories and present art. In Larnaca, between the stone walls of the fort, by means of soft sculptures, the CREAM artists and friends lay out the idea of a person arriving in a new space and starting to take possession of it,
by displaying around, in a still bare space, some personal objects:
dresses (Resi Girardello, Dania Zanotto, Cristina Treppo) as well as painted portraits (Nebojsa Despotovic), and Venetian interiors and landscapes (Onorina Frazzi). By means of moving images and sounds, John Volpato recreates memories of other places; while Martin-Emilian Balint, with his installation of 10.000 birds in golden paper, aims to generate in the visitor wonder, joy, and suspension, like for something that is there, is beautiful, but could disappear in a moment. Iosif Hadjikyriakos
provides photographic and painterly meditation about the girls of
Lefkari and the secular tradition of embroidery, which was planted there by the Venetian and became so renown that Leonardo da Vinci himself bought an altar cloth from Lefkari, which he donated to the Milan Duomo. Visitors are provided with a map of their itinerary among the works displayed inside the castle, and, leaving the exhibition, they can take with them some objects, from some of the golden paper birds in a mounting kit, or ironic fridge magnets,
and with which to
prolong the atmosphere of the exhibition bringing something of it in their homes and lives.
! ! Caterina Cornaro or Corner (1454-1510), born in Venice from a family with important commercial interests in Cyprus, came to love fondly several places in which she could not stay. Cyprus, in the first place, her adopted land, the lovely Mediterranean island in which she had arrived from Venice in 1472. Educated in a monastery in Padua, Catherine had been married by proxy in 1468 to Jacques II de Lusignan, heir to the throne of Cyprus, which she met four years later in Famagosta, greeted by memorable celebrations. The marriage was happy, even if short, since King Jacques ("Re Zaco" to the Venetians), died about a year later for the consequences of a hunting accident, leaving Catherine pregnant with her first child, and the kingdom vulnerable to the ambitions of expansion of several powerful neighbours in the Mediterranean. Some years of riots and conflict followed, and after also the child had died of the fevers, the Serenissima persuaded a not entirely willing Caterina to abdicate and to return to Venice, and took official possession of the island in 1489.
She then retired in Asolo, in the Venetian inland, the second major dwelling of her life. There she established, and led for about ten years, a splendid Renaissance court, showing to have fully understood the power with which art and culture could expand the boundaries of a physically small kindom. She gave the place many Cypriot features, as she had done more than a decade before bringing to Cyprus a distinct Venetian atmosphere. But also from Asolo, and the nearby 'Barco' (“The Hayloft”) of Altivole, the place of delights that she had built and populated by artists, musicians and intellectuals, Caterina was compelled to leave in 1509, under the threat of a military invasion, which pushed from the North. She died soon after in Venice, the place where her adventure had begun, in 1510.
! ! ! CREAM (Creativity and Research in Arts and Media) ! !
International art group created in 2007 by the artists Martin-Emilian Balint, Nebojša Despotović, Resi Girardello, Giacomo Roccon, Barbara Taboni, Cristina Treppo, Giuseppe Vigolo, Dania Zanotto, students or former students of the Academy of Venice (www.creamcollection.it).
! ! Exhibitions and events: !
CREAM On Madness/ Straitjackets, Open XI, 2008 (paintings, sculptures and installations on the theme of madness in the garden of the Island of San Servolo, Venice MADNESS in Paradise, Venice, Giardini della Biennale, June 6, 2009 THE CREAM SOCIETY, Asolo, Fondazione La Fornace dell’Innovazione, 2009 (sculpture, photography and installations on the themes of anxiety generated by the crisis). LA REGGIA PORTATILE/Four Events for Caterina Cornaro, Venezia, Asolo, Larnaca, 2010-11 (ongoing).
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"La Reggia Portatile" is promoted by: Regione del Veneto, City of Asolo, Municipality of Larnaca (Cyprus), Provincia di Treviso, Academy of Fine Arts of Venice, Nuova Icona, Associazione E:, Comitato della Sensa. With the support of: Municipality of Larnaca, Academy of Fine Arts of Venice, Nuova Icona, Association E:, Venice.
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