APOLIDIA

APOLIDIA
CONFLICT, COLONIALITY, STATELESSNESS, DIASPORA

 Apolidia is the first exhibition launched by the art platform THE PINNA, organised in collaboration with AVAPO Mestre. The show features 15 artists from conflict, coloniality, statelessness, and diaspora backgrounds, and focuses on the relationship between art and the perception of motherland. Apolidia is listed among the recipients of the Culture Grant 2023 sponsored by Fondazione Venezia. Please find below the fundamental keys of reading into the exhibition:

The category of Conflict has been addressed as a state of ongoing armed war between civil parties or as a state of invasion of a sovereign country from a third party. 

The category of Coloniality has been addressed as the interrelation between the dynamics of colonial power and their present impact on the production of knowledge. ^{[1] [2]}

The category of Statelessness has been addressed as defining people who don’t have a country they officially belong to.

The category of Diaspora has been addressed as a state of coerced migration from the country of origin due to political reasons.

All the mentions of the art platform THE PINNA refer to the practice of Gloria Campedelli.

For more information, please visit the website www.thepinna.com

Apolidia is a group show, investigating the relationship between contemporary art and the concept of motherland through 4 major categories, or states: conflict, coloniality, statelessness and diaspora. The project consists in the first exhibition of the art platform THE PINNA, organised in collaboration with AVAPO Mestre, and will be on show at Santa Maria delle Grazie (Via Poerio 32 – 30171 Mestre Venezia, Italy) from the 5^th of May to the 19^th of May 2024.

The artists involved come exclusively from backgrounds belonging to the aforementioned categories and were asked to choose the artwork which best describes the relationship with their land. The project is engaging with issues which concern political circumstances far from the everyday life of Western countries, trying to reify not only the sense of displacement due to a political diaspora or migration of the artists involved, but also the perspective of many among them who are currently based in countries such as Syria, South Africa, Ukraine, Ethiopia, and therefore daily facing the violence implied in those circumstances.

Apolidia as a concept makes impossible “to reify the ‘aesthetic response’ independently of the social context of its manifestation”, to say it with Gell (2008) ^[4], and the agency left to the artists, as well as the sociological framework of their state of living, endures the concept of artefacts and “things as agents” led by the intentions, and reify the feeling for their nations in a unique object. It appears important then to evaluate the context of the project also in terms of anthropological studies and psychological studies. Not exclusively, as it engages with both personal and collective issues that the artists might develop between them, and with the practitioner. With the result that another second crucial factor implied in a project such as Apolidia is related to the politics of the disagreement ^[5] and how to involve individuals personally and politically distant, without creating strong political dissent and disruption within the project itself.

It also must be highlighted that, conversely to the apparent premises, and albeit laying within a political framework – the show also aiming to provide the viewer with a political insight of the countries involved – the artists do not have to be defined as political to partake in the project. It appears then that the artists invested different meanings in the potentiality of this exhibition and, because of that, there’s no intention to rush the definition of the show itself. 

Apolidia thus emerges as being a politicised arena, attracting practioners who are interested in story-telling their personal experiences with conflict, coloniality, statelessness, and diaspora, and a neutral environment, seen as an opportunity for visibility. Apolidia is an exhibition focusing on the championship of artists who come from critical backgrounds and give them visibility not only in front of other creatives and art enthusiasts, but also scholars interested in the art and politics field. The research and educational aims consist in one of the most important outcomes of this initiative.

The existing forms of practical research that the project engages with and relates to are similar realities not strongly politicised but social-oriented, working with emerging artists, such as Via Farini in Italy, Sleeping with the Enemy Productions in Lebanon, Artist at Risk, Free Art Felega in Germany and Ethiopia, Question of Funding in Palestine, Ariella Azoulay’s practice, and Counterpoints in the United Kingdom. From a theoretical point of view, it has already been mentioned how Apolidia was influenced by and relates to Anthropological and Postcolonial Studies, aiming to build an argumentation which will focus on how an art project can be seen as a tool for development in the southern hemisphere of the world, with particular attention to the research of Arturo Escobar and the research of Walter Mignolo. Finally, the project engages with the theoretical concept of Commonism as theorized by Nico Dockx and Pascal Gielen. 

Gloria Campedelli

The Pinna’s founder.

gloria@thepinna.com

Acknowledgments:

Dear visitor, I thank you for the interest in our project Apolidia. Working on this project has been, and still is, an extraordinary adventure. It allowed me to acknowledge first-hand the complexity of investigating the Art and Politics field and created a breakthrough in my personal and academic life.

I would like to extend my sincere thanks to

AVAPO MESTRE, for collaborating with The Pinna and promoting this exhibition together. To Stefania Bullo, and all volunteers, thank you.

Micaela Velli (AVAPO Mestre), for believing in the project since day one, and the hard work and resources invested in it.

Giusto Cavinato (AVAPO Mestre), for the extraordinary support and all the hard work invested in setting up the show.

Arianna Cicero, for the extraordinary help, support and friendship offered while installing the exhibition.

Dr. Bernadette Buckley (Goldsmiths University), for the valuable feedback and inspiring the theorization of the first steps of this project (Who Owns the Land online show).

Professor John Reardon (Goldsmiths University), for his guidance, and the time invested In discussing the project.

All the artists who took part in the project, for their cooperation and the leap of faith in what I am doing and our community.

Bibliography:

^[1] Mignolo, W. D. (2007) ‘DELINKING. The rhetoric of modernity, the logic of coloniality and the grammar of de-coloniality’, Cultural Studies Volume 21, Issue 2-3: Globalization and the De-Colonial Option, pages 449-514

^[2] Maldonado-Torres, N. (2007) ‘ON THE COLONIALITY OF BEING. Contributions to the development of a concept’, Cultural Studies Volume 21- Issue 2-3: Globalization and the De-Colonial Option, pages 240-270

^[3] Vida Americana: Mexican muralists remake American Art, 1925–1945. Whitney Museum of American Art. (n.d.). Retrieved January 9, 2023, from https://whitney.org/exhibitions/vida-americana#exhibition-about

^[4] Gell, A 1998 Art and Agency, An Anthropological Theory, Clarendon Press, Oxford

^[5] Rancière, J (2004) Introducing Disagreement, Angelaki Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, Volume 9, Issue 3, pages 3-9, translated by Steven Corcoran

^[6] Dockx, N and Pascal, G, 2018 Commonism, A New Aesthetics of the Real, Valiz, Amsterdam