Lara Baladi at The Venice Biennale
Penelope's Labour
Weaving Words and Images
Venezia Fondazione Giorgio Cini
Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore
Opening: Tuesday May 31st 2011 at 5.30pm
The exhibition Penelope's Labour: Weaving Words and Images, featuring antique and contemporary tapestries and carpets, curated by Adam Lowe and Jerry Brotton, produced and organised by the Giorgio Cini Foundation, Venice, and Factum Arte Madrid, will have its vernissage on May 31 at 17.30 at the Centro Espositivo on the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore.
Upon invitation
The exhibition will be open to the public from June 4 to September 18, 2011
The main idea of the exhibition is to highlight Vittorio Cini's great interest in the manual production of tapestry and at the same time explore developments in contemporary art and the renewed ability of artists to use the medium to tell very varied, compelling stories that address the warp and weft of our contemporary realities. Ranging from late 15th-century tapestries depicting the siege of Jerusalem to Azra Aksamija's collective weaving on ethnic cleansing in Bosnia Herzegovina, Grayson Perry's vast allegory of contemporary life in the Walthamstow Tapestry and Mark Quinn's "flowers" of our manipulated natural world, this exhibition puts the woven image back at the heart of contemporary artistic practice.
In addition to some of the finest late 15th-century tapestries in the Giorgio Cini Foundation collections, the exhibition will also include contemporary tapestries and other fabrics by artists such as: Azra Aksamija, Lara Baladi, Alighiero Boetti, Manuel Franquelo, Carlos Garaicoa, Craigie Horsfield, Simon Peers & Nicholas Godley, Grayson Perry and Marc Quinn.
