Lo spirito dell’acqua. Un dialogo tra arte, religione e geografia

[The Spirit of Water. A Dialogue between Art, Religion and Geography]

Saturday, December 16th, 2023 at 3.30PM
Live streaming only. You can follow the talk on the Instagram profile @building.gallery
The dialogue will be held in Italian.

Speakers
Ludovico Bomben
Jaya Cozzani Chandra
Don Luigi Garbini
Ignazio Mortellaro
Giada Peterle

Moderator
Giulia Bortoluzzi

On the occasion of the exhibition project Equorea (di mari, ghiacci, nuvole e altre acque ancora) [Equorea (of seas, ice, clouds and other waters)] curated by Giulia Bortoluzzi, BUILDINGBOX inaugurated a series of online meetings, held quarterly, dedicated to the exploration of the theme of water, conceived as an emblem of all life, and as source of artistic inspiration.

The fourth meeting, titled Lo spirito dell’acqua [The Spirit of Water ], will be attended by Luigi Garbini, priest of the Ambrosian diocese and responsible for the musical activities of Milan’s curia and Giada Peterle, cultural geographer and expert in representations and constructions of spatial imagery, as well as referent of the Museum of Geography in Padua. The artists protagonists of Equorea’s quarter exhibition, Ludovico Bomben, Jaya Cozzani Chandra and Ignazio Mortellaro, will dialogue with the two guests and will invite them to reflect on the topic of water from their respective areas of expertise.

The symbolic meaning and the possibility of representation of water, which is variable, by its very nature, lacking boundaries and formal stability, will be questioned at the same time both from religious and eographical perspectives. The spirit of water will thus be investigated from the human perspective, projected as much in its verticality and transcendence as in its horizontal, and cartographic translation as spatial identity.

This dialogue will be the closing event of the series of Equorea’s meetings that took place during the year 2023, dedicated to the exploration of the following topics: Il tempo dell’acqua. Un dialogo tra arte, scienza e musica [The Time of Water. A Dialogue between Art, Science and Music] (Barbara De Ponti, Fabio Marullo, Michele Guido in dialogue with Roberto Ambrosini and Francesco Venturi); L’eco dell’acqua. Un dialogo tra arte, informazione e geopolitica internazionale [The Echo of Water. A Dialogue between Art, Information and International Geopolitics]. (Elena Mazzi, Silvia Mariotti in dialogue with Leonardo Parigi); La forma dell’acqua. Un dialogo tra arte e filosofia [The Shape of Water. A Dialogue between Art and Philosophy](Virginia Zanetti, Michele Spanghero, Fabio Roncato in dialogue with Davide Dal Sasso).

Ludovico Bomben (Pordenone, 1982) graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice after attending the four-year course in Decoration. His research began with environmental light installations aimed at deconstructing everyday environments and places, overturning the perceptions of those who habitually frequent them. More recently he has shifted his focus from the environment to the object, concentrating on the study of the relationship between material, language, form and concept. This analysis prompted him to use symbols belonging to the sphere of the sacred, a new territory of investigation. Between golden proportions and formal rigour he attempted a reinterpretation and redefinition of the sacred image in the contemporary, mixing ancient traditions with new generation industrial materials.

Jaya Cozzani Chandra (Mumbai, 1982) developed the entire academic course in visual arts at the Academy of Fine Arts in Carrara in the Multimedia Arts course and specialised in Visual Arts at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts. The artist works with material, time, science and philosophy. Her work embodies both a theoretical and purely poetic approach to the visible, poised between image and abstraction, between East and West. Hers is a quest for the mathematical-scientific-cosmic order of the world in which form and substance are inextricably linked, because everything evolves in a continuous flux.

Ignazio Mortellaro (Palermo, 1978) after a degree in Engineering and Architecture, a research project at the Centre of Studies of the Faculdade de Arquitectura de Porto and two years spent in South America and Filicudi, decided to focus his research on the field of visual arts, combining his interest in many disciplines such as science, philosophy, geography and literature. The research focuses on the study of the phenomena and rhythms of nature, cognitive logic and the definition of space. Drawing plays a central role in the design phase of the work and is used as a privileged tool for synthesis and reasoning. The artist’s work is heterogeneous, using different mediums such as sculpture, drawing, photography, video and installation.

Luigi Garbini, a Milanese priest since 1994, is a music historian and has directed the Laboratory of Contemporary Music at the Service of the Liturgy (LmcsL) since 1999. He published Breve storia della musica sacra in 2005 with Il Saggiatore. In 2011, he participated in the writing of the Guide de la Musique de la Renaissance‘s entries (Fayard, Paris). With Unicopli, he published Al buio si ascolta meglio: la musica nelle orecchie degli scrittori (2014). For BAM, he published: Lorenzo Perosi. Tutti, o quasi, i malintesi raccolti attorno a un nome (Geneva, 2022); Luciano Migliavacca. La musica sacra al bivio (Geneva, 2023).

Giada Peterle is a cultural geographer at the University of Padua, where she is Scientific Director of the Museum of Geography. She teaches literary geography and “landscape storytelling”, and she works on transdisciplinary relations between geography, literature, comics, and artistic languages. As a cartoonist and illustrator, among other things, she has published Pigafetta. Storia del primo viaggio intorno al mondo (2023), and the comic anthology Quartieri. Viaggio al centro delle periferie italiane (2019).