Claire Fontaine. Pasquarosa. Marinella Senatore

Museo Diego Aragona Pignatelli Cortes
Curated by Pier Paolo Pancotto
8/5/2021 – 27/6/2021

Saturday the 8th of May from 10 am to 5 pm it will be opened to the public at Diego Aragona Pignatelli Corte Museum of Naples the exhibition that includes for the first time two personalities of the contemporary creative panorama, Claire Fontaine (artistic collective created in 2004) and Marinella Senatore (Cava de’ Tirreni (SA) 1977), together with an artist of the Nineteenth Century, Pasquarosa (Anticoli Corrado, RM, 1896- Camaiore, LU, 1973).

Curated by Pier Paolo Pancotto, the exhibition takes shape thanks to the collaboration among the Regional Direction of Museums of Campania, the Agovino Collection, Naples and the Nicola Del Roscio Foundation – La Fondazione, Rome.

The exposition presents 34 artworks of the three artists enriched by documents and develops in the exhibition halls and the historical rooms on the first floor of the Pignatelli Museum. It allows a dialogue among three interpreters who are different one from another in history, generation and culture but associated by a common sensitiveness towards the theme of individual freedom, in particular the female one. This orientation is explicated by each of them with their own ways which are naturally linked to the specific personal and professional experience but able to present unexpected and sometimes surprising points of convergence.

In fact, while Claire Fontaine and Marinella Senatore consider universal themes like politics, religion, violence, gender differences, the rule of women in the social context through various expressive methods – sculpture, drawing, photography, writing, installations, videos, performances – so does the “Pasquarosa phenomenon”, as it was stated by Cipriano Efisio Oppo in 1918, facing the same themes. With a difference: more than through the exercise of her own profession, Pasquarosa made it by her own existence, consciously or unconsciously. Therefore, by facing a series of environmental and social circumstances which were unusual for that time so that she became an ideal pioneer of those claim movements of economic, civil and political women rights which are often the object of creation by Claire Fontaine and Marinella Senatore.

The exposition is, therefore, outlined as a sort of virtual dialogue on shared themes, though they are analyzed by different points of view, among Claire Fontaine, Pasquarosa, and Marinella Senatore which takes the form of a single large installation: it aims to underline the dialectic and experimental character of the project.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue with critical texts and pictures of the exposed artworks, edited by Di Virgilio Editor.

A special thanks goes to the artists and all those who have made this project possible with their contribution.

Photo credits: Danilo Donzelli.