Chiara Ventura in Prato: relationships, conflict and public space in "I'll Leave You Here"

From February 15 to March 8, 2026, the spaces of Villa Rospigliosi in Prato welcome Ti lascio qui, a project by Chiara Ventura (Verona, 1997) accompanied by a critical text by Angel Moya Garcia. The exhibition is promoted and supported by the artistic direction of Chorasis - LoSpaziodellaVisione, with the contribution of Toscanaincontemporanea2025 and Publiacqua, and is articulated as a path that interweaves visual works and performative actions conceived specifically for the occasion. The opening is set for Feb. 15 at 4 p.m. and is marked by the unreleased performance 2x2. HOW LOVE FINISHES (forget about you), lasting about ninety minutes. The project concludes on March 8, also at 4 p.m., with the finissage and presentation of the second 2x2 performance. LOOK AT THAT MOON, LOOK AT THAT SEA, which is developed in a shorter time, about forty minutes.

“Chiara Ventura (Verona, 1997),” writes Angel Moya Garcia in her critical text, “constructs a traversable device, divided into three environments, in which the body, love and legacy act as unstable and never pacified fields, exposed to continuous rewriting. The exhibition is articulated through fractures and suspensions, taking the risk of the unspoken and contradiction as a method. A web of stimuli, suggestions, traps, ambiguities and tensions in which leaving is not the same as giving up, abandoning or rejecting, but interrupting what has been naturalized as normal, as practice and as method. An attempt to create a gap from which the unexpected subject can emerge, a body that refuses compensation, that inhabits conflict and that, precisely within this, attempts a radical form of freedom. Taken together, the works presented in the three rooms offer themselves not as linear stages nor as decisive moments, but as fields of forces in constant tension, as devices that expose subjectivity to the risk of transformation without ever defining the outcome.”

The core of the exhibition is developed through a selection of works that belong to the most intimate dimension of Ventura’s work. The first room brings together works that configure an overtly political and affective sphere, in which dynamics of rejection against the toxic masculine and patriarchal mechanisms emerge. Here a subject takes shape who learns the possibility of shirking, of saying no without shame or fear, questioning established relational models and internalized power hierarchies.

The second room focuses instead on the theme of legacy. Ventura addresses the dimension of genetic, cultural and symbolic legacies that run through individual identity, emphasizing how each subject is bound to determinisms transmitted by previous generations. Within this awareness opens up the space of rupture, where emancipation appears as a process traversed by returns, repetitions and invisible ties. These are elements that demand recognition before they can be defused, making visible the complexity of the paths of enfranchisement.

In the third room, the exhibition path confronts the limit as a structural condition of relationship. Here language shows its own fractures and what remains is a fragile proximity, made up of silences and shared voids. Ventura works on a dimension in which not everything can be pronounced, recognizing the void as the last possible space of relationship and as a place where communication stops without necessarily dissolving.

The two 2x2 performances expand these themes by taking them out of the private space. In both actions, a couple goes through a time marked by the difficulty of finding a final agreement, functional communication or conflict-free harmony. Problems, urgencies and emotional instances follow one another seamlessly, restoring an everydayness exposed to the public gaze. Love is thus moved into the shared space, where it accepts the risk of vulnerability and takes on a dimension of exposure, defense of rights and affirmation of an affection that can no longer remain confined to the domestic sphere.

Notes on the artist

Chiara Ventura (Verona, 1997) is a visual artist and performer. Her research takes on a strong existential imprint, in which biographical experience becomes an instrument of investigation. Through the theme of the double, the work focuses on the dynamics that govern the relationship between self and other. The paintings, placed in a zone of tension between figuration and abstraction, translate on the visual plane the conceptual nodes developed in the plastic works and performative actions. The body and its relations with the psyche, emotionality and otherness represent the starting point of a predominantly performative practice, built around a condition of unprotected exposure, which involves both the performer and the observer. Ventura investigates the more subtle forms of violence in the contemporary world and focuses on the political aspects of human behavior.

In 2020 he co-founded plural, a project oriented toward a collective dimension of art making, in which individual authorship converges into a shared perspective. Through performances, installations, video, music and editorial projects, pluraldevelopsa practice based on constant confrontation with the social context. Ventura’s work has been presented in institutions and spaces such as Lemme Centre d’Art Contemporain in Sion, Tenuta Dello Scompiglio in Lucca, Mart - Galleria Civica in Trento, Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa in Venice, Villa Rondinelli in Fiesole, Museo Gypsotheca Antonio Canova in Possagno, FAO in Rome, Galleria ME Vannucci in Pistoia, Viafarini in Milan, M9 - Museo del ’900 in Mestre and Spazio In Situ in Rome. He has also collaborated with such entities as Exibart, Adiacenze, Osservatorio Futura, Attiva Cultural Projects and Studio Savarin.

Chiara Ventura in Prato: relationships, conflict and public space in "I'll Leave You Here"

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