Nuke Mars

Marina Gasparini

October 14th - December 9th, 2023
Nuke Mars | Marina Gasparini
Mazzoli Gallery / via Nazario Sauro 62, Modena

Marina Gasparini was born in Gabicce Mare (PU). He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ravenna. The use of the visual emblem and the use of textile fibers and gestures in the process of creating the work are the founding elements of his research, always subject to continuous reformulations in relation to predominantly site-specific planning. His artistic practice develops starting from the re-elaboration of iconographic subjects coming from different eras and cultures and from cultural interests that draw on esoteric, botanical, literary, scientific and ethnographic fields in dialogue with architectural or geographical space. He has participated in artistic residency programs in Germany, Belgium, Rajasthan, Japan, United States, Finland. In summer 2023 he developed a research project on the impact of colonialism in the ethnographic collections at the Linden Museum in Stuttgart during an artistic residency as part of the European Project Taking Care, Ethnographic and World Cultures Museums as Spaces of Care. In 2022 she was the winner of the "Sustainibility and Ars" award organized and promoted by Laguna Prize with the Ca' Foscari University of Venice and NaturaSi. He lives and works in Bologna, where he is a teacher at the Academy of Fine Arts.

PRESS RELEASE

Mazzoli will be pleased to present Nuke Mars, Marina Gasparini's first solo exhibition in Modena. Marina Gasparini's installation, Nuke Mars, composed of thirty-one polychrome vase-sculptures, is the evolution of a previous project of hers entitled Schiaparelli consisting of a group of ceramic vases covered with wire, whose shapes reproduced a Martian village that appeared during a state of trance similar to the medium Hélène Smith, famous for her ability to speak and write in languages unknown to her. The group of ceramics presented in the exhibition is inspired by the essay From the Indies to the Planet Mars by the psychiatrist Théodore Flournoy dedicated to the figure of the medium and by other texts regarding the sensitive artist. The project was born during a period of artistic residency in a village in Rajasthan overlooking a rocky desert with Martian features, characterized by the absence of waterways, and whose only artisanal activity is ceramics. The title of the work Nuke Mars, however, refers to Elon Musk's declarations on the desire to bombard Mars with nuclear weapons with the aim of "nuclearizing" the red planet to create an atmosphere similar to that of the Earth, finally realizing the dream of a its colonization by mankind. In this project for the Mazzoli Gallery, Marina Gasparini brings together in her works the primary textile and ceramic activities that characterize the rise of all cultures at all latitudes, to the point of formulating a pragmatic utopia of modular pseudo-architecture.