From April 4th
to July 23rd, 2023
Fondazione Elpis, via Lamarmora 26, Milan
Condividi
Chì ghe pù Nissun!
From April 4th
to July 23rd, 2023
Fondazione Elpis, via Lamarmora 26, Milan
Condividi

In collaboration with Ramdom

Chì ghe pù Nissun! started out as a reinterpretation and extension of the residency, research and production process entitled A Sud di Marte, in which the four artists – Bekhbaatar Enkhtur, Martina Melilli, Matteo Pizzolante and Agnese Spolverini – participated between April 2022 and January 2023 in Castrignano de' Greci (Lecce), at KORA – Centro del Contemporaneo.

During their two-month residency, the artists were invited by Ramdom and Fondazione Elpis to examine the concept of Meridione (the Italian South) and explore its practical and symbolic implications. The study of the oral tradition, anthropologically themed essays and texts on local history formed the starting point for an interpretation of decentralised contexts as potential spaces for the reactivation of meaning. An interpretation that places these contexts at the centre of a political and cultural debate on a broader scale and of great topicality.

The exhibition set up in the former industrial laundry that is the headquarters of Fondazione Elpis aims to start from this reflection and broaden its scope, ideally bringing into play the dichotomous ‘city-province’ relationship and the production and consumption models that these historically represent. The phrase that gives the exhibition its title - There’s nobody here anymore! - uttered in Milanese dialect by the owner of a historic shop in Via Orti, may be heard indifferently – albeit with two distinct meanings – in a central district of Milan or in a southern Italian town, such as Castrignano de' Greci itself. A statement that creates an unintentional parallelism between the transformations of inland areas and those of the urban fabric, highlighting the global character that such processes take on nowadays.

While A Sud di Marte evokes the vision of a remote destination, a South that is a place of revelation, of experimentation with a new methodology, Chì ghe pù Nissun! stems from the artists’ own experience in Castrignano de' Greci and evolves through confrontation with a radically different context, that of a district undergoing a complete transformation within a large urban centre.

The narrative that emerges from these four voices evokes a complex and multiform spectrum, a polyphony of gazes and approaches that are very different from each other despite having passed through the same context. In this diversity of practices, the exhibition finds the key to constructing a narrative that, starting from the places of residence, reaches as far as the centre of Milan to give shape to new suggestions and new perspectives.

Bekhbaatar Enkhtur
Martina Melilli
Matteo Pizzolante
Agnese Spolverini
Bekhbaatar Enkhtur

Bekhbaatar Enkhtur’s reflection on territory can only begin with his country of origin, Mongolia, whose culture and iconography play a central role in the artist’s work. During his residency in Castrignano de’ Greci, he drew inspiration from the earliest western travellers, the explorers from the “known” world to the distant “Orient”, to the edges of what was then unknown, recounting its wonders and traditions. Enkhtur’s work is therefore modulated according to the notes of travel and discovery. Fountain is a sculpture inspired by the stories of Flemish missionary William de Rubruck, who between 1253 and 1255 travelled as far as the Khan’s palace in Karakorum. Here, according to de Rubruck’s account, travellers were welcomed into a garden where at the centre there was a large fountain, described as “the silver tree”, decorated with cherubs, trumpets, lions and snakes, from whose mouths flowed wine, milk, rice liquor and a drink based on honey. Such a device, much more than just an ornamental sculpture, was used to distribute intoxicating beverages, and to entertain guests at feasts or audiences. Fountain presents the same theatrical combination of forms and elements, distributed over two floors of the Fondazione. Just as the fountain in the courtyard of the Karakorum palace welcomed travellers, traders and diplomats, Enkhtur’s work invites visitors to lose themselves in its sinuous forms and to help themselves to the wine flowing from its spouts. Enkhtur’s work thus reveals another approach to space and territory, no longer physical, neither mystical nor biographical, but imaginative.

photo by Fabrizio Vatieri