Starting May 2, the Pista 500 at the Pinacoteca Agnelli in Turin will be enriched with three new site-specific installations that will join the works already on the Lingotto’s suspended rooftop garden: the three new works are by artists Felix Gonzalez-Torres (Cuba, 1957 - USA, 1996), Finnegan Shannon (USA, 1989) and Rirkrit Tiravanija (Argentina, 1961).
It is Do You Want Us Here or Not by artist Finnegan Shannon: a project composed of a series of benches distributed along the route of the Runway 500 on the roof of the Lingotto. Shannon highlights the social value of the accessibility of spaces, inviting the public to reflect on how the places we inhabit on a daily basis are often poorly or not at all accessible to people with disabilities and non-conforming bodies. Untitled (Tomorrow is the Question) by artist Rirkrit Tiravanija is an installation that consists of four ping pong tables, placed on one of the terraces of the Runway, where people are invited to play freely. A novel version of the project, the four ping pong tables display four different languages related to the major non-Italian communities in Turin. Tiravanija aims to transform the game into a space for negotiating identity, challenging the concept of national belonging.
On the occasion of EXPOSED. Torino Foto Festival, the new International Festival of Photography in Turin, Pinacoteca Agnelli enriches the project on the Pista 500 with an intervention that extends to the entire city of Turin, curated by Sarah Cosulich and Lucrezia Calabrò Visconti. Untitled (1991), the work by Felix Gonzalez-Torres consists of a photograph on the billboard of the Pista 500 and on six billboards posted around the city. Untitled, which depicts an unmade double bed, is installed without any information, so that people encounter the work in the urban landscape without direct explanation. First exhibited in 1991, the work invited people to explore the boundary between public space and private life in an era marked by HIV, and today it is open to new interpretations and analogies in the various contexts in which it is displayed. First set up on billboards in New York City neighborhoods and subsequently re-presented in several cities around the world, the intimate and domestic image is intended to create a strong opposition to adjacent advertisements, challenging social norms and bringing themes such as death, grief and loss into public space.
The city of Turin represents a significant venue for Gonzalez-Torres’s work, invited in 1991 to Castello di Rivara, where he presented a series of works that have remained legendary. The billboard Untitled was first presented in Turin at a group show in 2000 at Castello di Rivoli. Bringing Untitled back to Turin today after 20 years opens a reflection on how our view of the city has changed and how its spaces can be opened to multiple perspectives and experiences. The work raises questions that are still crucial today, such as the collective processing of loss or how to regulate individual autonomy in private space, in a historical moment that has unhinged our habits about mourning and absence.
The works opening on Runway 500 thus continue Pinacoteca Agnelli’s mission devoted to inclusivity. Indeed, inclusiveness is a theme of the projects that Pinacoteca chooses to host, starting with Sylvie Fleury’s work Yes to All, installed from May 2022 on the roof at the museum’s entrance and a symbol of its new program. Today, this work has become an identity statement for the institution, which wants to present itself as a space open to the community, able to welcome and engage the diverse audiences of the city and beyond.
For info: https://www.pinacoteca-agnelli.it
Turin, Track 500 is enriched with three new site-specific installations |
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