Lezioni d’Italiano

In Autumn 2013, Fiorucci Art Trust presented the first instalment in Lezioni D’Italiano, a series of artist lecture-performances. Curated by Fiorucci Art Trust Director, Milovan Farronato, these evening programmes present Italian artists, or those that address Italian subject matter, once a month at Fiorucci Art Trust’s HQ. Through the years, artists of different generations showed works that explored and expanded the nature of their practice in the uniquely intimate environment of the residential HQ, creating a dynamic platform for participation and engagement.

The first round of Lezioni D’Italiano began with artist Patrizio Di Massimo on Monday 2nd December, followed by Chiara Fumai on Monday 27th January and Liliana Moro on Monday 17th February. Previous iterations also include SAGG Napoli, SAGG SCOPA FAT, (2020); Alex Cecchetti, Taman Shud (2015); Anna Franceschini with Diego Marcon and Federico Chiari, Videogiochi(2014); Ian Kiaer, Il Baciamano (2014); Sissi, Parallel Anatomy (2014).

For the opening performance, Patrizio Di Massimo presented a piece titled Monologue for two. The work is a monologue in the shape of dialogue between the artist and a video that portrays the artist. Di Massimo is on stage physically but hidden behind a curtain; the video is instead realised with Morfo, an iPhone application that creates 3D avatars through processing a simple bi-dimensional portrait picture. In this work, the artist deals with multiple projections of the self, in relation to reality and imagination, to what he could have been and what he is. Monologue for two is an intimate self-portrait, in which the artist invents himself for what he is.

Patrizio Di Massimo (b. Jesi, Italy, 1983) lives and works in London. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera, Milan, and received his MA from the Slade School of Fine Art, London. He is currently exhibiting at Gasworks, London, with the solo show The Lustful Turk. He has participated in residencies at Stipendium Kunstzei- traum, Munich (2012), de Ateliers, Amsterdam (2009-2011), Sommerakademie at Centre Paul Klee, Bern (2010), Fondazione Spinola Banna per l’Arte, Banna di Poirino (2009). His upcoming exhibitions include solo presentations at Artissima, Turin, Kunsthalle Lissabon, Lisbon, Rowing Projects, London. Recent solo exhibitions include Voglio Vivere Così, T293, Rome, The Lustful Turk, Villa Medici, Rome and a performance at the Stedelijk Museum as part of the public program. In 2012 he was selected as a finalist in the Premio Italia 2012, hold at MAXXI, Rome and participated in La Storia che non ho vissuto (testimone indiretto), Castello di Rivoli, Rivoli, Ritual without Myth, Royal College of Art, London.

Chiara Fumai (Rome 1978 – Bari 2017) was an Italian artist known for her performative and multi-media works featuring psychic abilities, anti-spectacle strategies and counterculture icons. She participated in dOCUMENTA(13) with The Moral Exhibition House: creating a space for feminist insurrection disguised as a freak show between Kassel’s Aueparke and the roof of the Fridericianum. She channelled the spirit of an Anonymous Woman in the historical art collection of the Querini Stampalia Foundation in Venice (I Did Not Say or Mean “Warning”, 2013) and created a fictional propaganda of Valerie Solanas’ S.C.U.M. Manifesto mirroring the first political campaign of Silvio Berlusconi (Chiara Fumai reads Valerie Solanas, 2013), with which she received the IX Furla Art Award. On the occasion of Contour 7, The Biennial of Moving Image, she rewrote the story of her live acts into a seance (The Book of Evil Spirits, 2015). In 2017 Chiara Fumai won the XIV Premio New York held by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage. In May 2019 her work was exhibited at the Italian Pavilion on the occasion of the 58th Venice Biennale of Visual Arts.

Always refusing to be victimized, minoritized or diminished as a female artist, Chiara Fumai adopted the vocabulary of threat, offence, revolt, violence, vandalism and boredom to produce uncomfortable situations, collages, environments and actions in open opposition to the dominant discourses of Western patriarchy. Playing an ironical game of true fiction which appropriates the techniques of remixing and channeling, Chiara Fumai’s performative pieces evoke female figures who, with their courage and anger, marked human history just before being excluded: amongst them, bearded lady Annie Jones and Circassian beauty Zalumma Agra, German terrorist Ulrike Meinhof and illiterate medium Eusapia Palladino, philosopher Rosa Luxemburg and feminist writer Carla Lonzi. Her remarkable and peculiar gallery of portraits also included a few male presences like the illusionist Harry Houdini. Not to be forgotten is Nico Fumai, the first of her fictional personas and unique in having a biographical origin. With him, Chiara Fumai not only imagined a new profession for her father but also used her interest for Italo disco as a strategy to interpret a specific historical era as well as bringing together a number of different fields of research.

Chiara Fumai’s solo exhibitions include: ISCP, New York (2019); Rosa Santos, Valencia (2016); Museion, Bolzano (2015); Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venice (2013); A Palazzo Gallery, Brescia (2013); Futura – Centre for Contemporary Art, Prague (2013); MACRO Testaccio, Rome (2011); and Careof – DOCVA, Milan (2008). Group exhibitions include: Tatjana Pieters, Gent (2017); David Roberts Art Foundation, London (2015); Contour 7 – A Moving Image Biennale, Mechelen (2015); Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, Madrid (2015); Whitechapel Gallery, London; De Appel Arts Centre, Amsterdam; Nottingham Contemporary; Fiorucci Art Trust; SongEun Foundation, Seoul (all in 2014); MUSAC Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, León (2013); dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel (2012); and the Nomas Foundation, Rome (2011). She won the Furla Art Award (2013) and the Premio New York (2016). International residencies include: International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP), New York (2017); Art Omi, Ghent, New York (2016) and Wiels, Brussels (2014).

www.chiarafumai.com

Liliana Moro was born in 1961 in Milan, where she lives and works. She graduated from the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan, where she studied with Luciano Fabro. In 1989 she founded, with other artists, the Spazio di via Lazzaro Palazzi in Milan, active until 1993. Liliana Moro has shown in major international group exhibitions including Documenta IX, Kassel (1992), Aperto XLV Ven- ice Biennale (1993) Castello di Rivoli, Turin (1994), Quadriennale, Rome (1996/2008), Moderna Museet, Stockholm (1998), PS1 , New York (1999), De Apple, Amsterdam (1999) and the Biennal de Valencia (2001). Solo shows have included Galleria Emi Fontana, Milan (various), Gallery Greta Meert Bruxelles, MUHKA Antwerpen, and Fondazione Ambrosetti Brescia. Recently, Liliana Moro has shown at the Italian Cultural Institute of Los Angeles (2008), and Fabbrica del Va- pore Milan (2008), Fondazione A.Ratti Como (2012), and has participated in important group exhibitions, including Italics, Palazzo Grassi Venice (2008), Focus on Contemporary Italian Art, Mambo Bologna (2008), Celebration, Institution, Critique, Galleria Civica di Trento (2009), La Magnifica Ossessione, MART Rovereto (2012). She was one of the selected artists by Milovan Farronato for the Padiglione Italia, 58th Biennale d’Arte di Venezia, (2019).