Pachamama Concrete
PACHAMAMA CONCRETE

curated by Benedetta Carpi De Resmini

2022


Albumarte, Rome - Project created in collaboration with Latitudo Art Project

The title Pachamama Concrete is a play on words, a metaphor for a place. The word Pachamama, which in the archaic Inca culture means Mother Earth, intends to underline the link with the original principle of creation, generous Goddess of fertility and agriculture, nourishing mother who gives life. The ancient goddess, Ceres, dear to the ancient Romans, symbol of fertility and regeneration, is the key element of this project, which saw its origin in the Corviale, a peripheral neighborhood of the city of Rome, not very far from the temple dedicated to her by the Arvali friars. Concrete instead wants to allude to the almost one kilometer long residential complex, social housing built in the late Seventies by the architect Mario Fiorentino, which over the years has become a symbol of the failure of housing policies. Concrete is therefore the cement with which the building was built, but it also alludes to the concreteness and resilience of the women who live there. The project was born during a residency carried out by the artist, as part of the European Magic Carpets platform, a platform co-financed by Creative Europe which unites fifteen European partners, whose leader is Kaunas Biennial and conceived by Benedetta Carpi De Resmini, who in 2021 started a project in the western outskirts of the city.

Guendalina began to listen to these places, trying to go beyond that stereotyped image of the modern suburbs, but returning to a circular and mutual conception of time and space. Through the works on display, the artist wants to bring out the life of the so-called Serpentone (big snake). The exhibition is built around the voices of some of the inhabitants who composed the track of the sound-walk and which physically retraces different points of the building.

The audio that can be listened to in the rooms and downloaded via a QR code becomes the common thread that runs along the exhibition itinerary, which connects each single work, revealing its profound meaning and reconstructing that natural bond with the place. Guendalina, through sound installations, videos and drawings, leads us to question our political, cultural and moral reality, exploring its limits.
All the works highlight a double contrasting aspect that refers to both the fragility and the strength of a place like Corviale. Agile and surprising, haunting and intermixing, indomitable and nomadic, primitive and wild are some of the adjectives that the artist associates with the large pen drawings made during her residency. Furthermore, an evocative video of the immanence and transcendence of the place is presented, with original music by Federico Pascucci and performed by Giulia Anita Bari, Carla González, Ambra Chiara Michelangeli, Federico Pascucci, Marco Zenini. All the works created, some on the occasion of this exhibition, start from the principle of circularity and sharing associated with the figure of the Pachamama, transforming the controversial Serpentone into that sacred serpent often associated with the Goddess as it is capable of shedding its skin and cyclically regenerating itself.