Elena Mazzi | IDENTITIES AND TERRITORIES

2 Oct 2017 > 31 Jen 2018 | ThalieLab Brussels

RESIDENCIES • 02/10/2017 > 31/01/2018
Elena Mazzi (Italy) / Identities and territories

Identities and territories, this theoretical and performance research project focuses on the aesthetic and legal dimension of migrants’ stories. The artist intends to collaborate with political asylum seekers. Elena Mazzi is interested in the fragility and the ambiguity of their statements, as well as the perceptions of intergovernmental organizations. The artist will work in collaboration with Enrica Camporesi (1985), translator specializing in Arabic literature based in Antwerp who has been working on the idea of migrant integration by including them into socio-cultural projects. The duo will use these narratives as a source of documentary work. They will develop a collective performance by questioning the search for truth, the fear of the future and the pressure that these men and women are experiencing.

Born in 1984 in Reggio Emilia in Italy, Elena Mazzi lives and works in Venice. After studying History of Art at Siena University in Tuscany and Visual Arts at the IUAV University of Venice, she spent a semester as a guest student at the Royal Academy of Art (Konsthögskolan) in Stockholm. Elena Mazzi has been included in various solo exhibition and group shows in Europe including Collective memory and social space at Botkyrka Konsthall in Stockholm, TRA / ARADA / IN BETWEEN in Istanbul and Art Stays, International Festival of Contemporary Art in Ptuj, Slovenia. Particulary struck by the earthquake that destroyed the town of l’Aquila, the capital of the italian region of Abruzzo in 2009, she is interested in the relationship between human and environment. Based on an anthropological approach, her artistic practice studies and gathers information on topics like identities and territories.

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ThalieLab and Thalie Art Foundation are a private initiative of Nathalie Guiot. Former journalist and publisher (Anabet Editions’ co-founder), she created Thalie Art Project in 2012, a non-for-profit organization which proposed cross-disciplinary encounters related to contemporary art, such as Experienz, a performance platform conceived in Brussels.

Thalie Art Project has now become Thalie Art Foundation, a private foundation whose mission is to support contemporary creation dedicated to societal themes, thus fostering active and collaborative artistic practices in order to create social ties and to rise awareness. This is also to live and “bring to life” a new approach to contemporary art by being closer to artists and work processes. Involved also in educational matters, Nathalie Guiot launched an educational and artistic program in a «Dalit» school (caste of the Intouchables) in South India. She co-founded the Friends Fund at ENSAV La Cambre for International students in Brussels to enable master students to compare and upgrade their knowledge with the savoir-faire of craftmen and to support exchanges via other art schools around the world. She is also part of the design acquisition comitee at the Centre Pompidou, a BOZAR and WIELS patrons and a founding member of the Tokyo Art Club in Paris. Nathalie Guiot is also the author of Collectionneurs, les VIP de l’art contemporain (Anabet Editions, 2008), Conversations, l’artiste et le collectionneur, (BlackJack Editions, 2013).