Tuesday, 21 March, 8pm, visual artist Laura Cionci presents her new project Kalopsia, for the re-opening of the “Museum of Innocence” in Mildura, under the direction of the Italian-Australian artist Domenico de Clario.
Moreover, Cionci’s presence will begin the artist-in-residence program for the museum.
During her residency, the artist will work on a new video by immersing herself into the deep landscapes of Mildura, a place/border in itself; in the future, the project will dialogue with Kalopsia, bringing circularity (and closure) to the themes of border/threshold.
Kalopsia is a contemporary, multidisciplinary art project (literature and film) ideated and created by visual artist Laura Cionci, filmmaker Alessandro Zangirolami, and art curator Eleonora Raspi, and aims at presenting their theoretical and practical long-term research on concepts such as liminal space, trespassing borders and twisting perceptions of reality. By including Raspi’s curatorial vision and Cionci/Zangirolami’s video, the project is structured around its dual nature and takes part in the interdisciplinary research platform entitled Waiting Posthuman, founded by Milan-based architect Azzurra Muzzonigro and philosopher Leonardo Caffo.
As a combination of the Greek roots “kallos”, meaning beauty, and “opsis”, meaning sight (or “opos”, meaning eyes), the word kalopsia may imply beautiful sight or with beautiful eyes, but it more precisely indicates the delusion of perceiving things as being more beautiful than they really are. Of the images we see, who decides which are real or unreal, meaningful, or meaningless?
Visibility is deeply connected to discontinuity because it is so strictly dependent from the subjectivity of the individual. The perception of a place, the final point of arrival, almost entirely depends on the traveller’s mood and emotion; and given the variegated existing spectrum of human beings, cultures and political approaches, the perception of a place always moves and changes, as it channels subjectivity of vision (and arguably, an ultimate inability to seize the same image).
