the european biennial of contemporary art
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artists

Ewa Partum

1945, Grodzisk Mazowiecki, PL Lives in Berlin, DE

The Ways to Rovereto, 2008 Performance, installation Active Poetry. Poem by Ewa, 1971 – 73 Video, 5’ 46’’ Tautological Cinema, 1973 – 74 Video, 4’ 12’’ Drawing TV, 1976 Video, 5’ 53’’

ROVERETO

Ewa_partum_opt

One of the leading figures of early conceptual and feminist art, Ewa Partum is an icon, legend and creative pioneer. Author of performances, ephemeral actions, experimental films and installations, Partum has long been preoccupied with questioning the autonomy and legality of the public space, particularly concerning the role of the female artist in the public discourse within the oppressive political system of a Communist regime. Her new installation, The Ways to Rovereto is in fact a further elaboration of Partum’s Active Poetry or Metapoetry performance series from the 1970s, where the artist, in a spontaneous act of “linguistic” liberation, used to scatter letters made of paper and coming from masterpieces of literature thus creating an uncanny carpet of white textual fabric. The Ways to Rovereto refers to the novels of South Tyrolian writer, Joseph Zoderer, and especially to his novel Das Glück beim Händewaschen (1982), a story of identity and alienation. Experiments in the fields of conceptual and visual poetry led the artist towards discussing the linguistics of film in several series: Films by Ewa , the Tautological Cinema and Drawing TV – cinematic studies as a conceptual notebooks which delineate Partum’s contemplative space for the critique of political reality and the deconstruction of structuralist cinema. Partum’s influential work remains a powerful and poetic source of resistance and criticism in the dominant vocabularies of the public domain.


Location

ROVERETO

ADAM BUDAK: "PRINCIPLE HOPE"

EX PETERLINI, VIA SAVIOLI 20 – MANIFATTURA TABACCHI, P.ZZA MANIFATTURA 1 -STAZIONE FERROVIARIA, PIAZZALE ORSI, I-38068 ROVERETO, ITALY

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