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Lina Pallotta and Caterina De Nicola at Last Tango

Duo Show «We Unleash Storms, Yet We Like the Sun» curated by Michele Bertolino, December 8, 2022 until February 17, 2023

Artists

Caterina De Nicola, Lina Pallotta

Institution

Last Tango

Location

Zurich

Download

Press release (PDF)

Website

lasttango.info

Exhibition View Duo Show «We Unleash Storms, Yet We Like the Sun» at Last Tango, Zurich, 2022-2023 / Photo: Kilian Bannwart / Courtesy: the artists and Last Tango

We Unleash Storms, Yet We Like the Sun

The title of the exhibition “We Unleash Storms, Yet We Like the Sun’’ could be a tag on a wall. Or alternatively it’s that poetic phrase that you would stumble upon while scrolling your tumblr feed, so very millennial, or it’d be the kind of statement printed on some t-shirt, so very fast-fashion and pseudo-punk. Yet, if we travel back in time and we land in the sunny alleys of Naples in the 70s, we could have heard this very phrase in the midst of those busy streets, shouted at the top of the lungs by students, queers and hippies attending protests in rutilant public squares.

The exhibition features works by Lina Pallotta (b. 1955, lives and works in Rome) and Caterina De Nicola (b. 1991, lives and works in Zurich). Two artists who share similar artistic approaches. Photographs dating back to the 90s of Porpora Marcasciano, trans activist and writer, feature alongside embellished walls made of screws and translucent balls scattered on the floor.

It’s a herstory of real dreams, utopian practices and wet intimacies. The landscape you are witnessing is reminiscent of the 70s in Italy, a virtual civil war (T. Negri), where leftist groups, students, creatives were imagining another world; or, queer and trans people were making their way out of the closet through a movement of self-narration, mythopoiesis and discovery.

Lina Pallotta and Porpora Marcasciano met on the same side of those barricades in 1976, and they never left each other’s side. Despite the distance, they managed to meet in different places, be it the East Village in NYC or in Italy, in Rome, Bologna and Naples.

The exhibition We Unleash Storms, Yet We Like the Sun grew out of an ongoing conversation between the artists and myself on processes of image- and world-making, namely the ways that we collectively make the spaces we inhabit through symbolic practices.

De Nicola and Pallotta understand self-construction as an operation of subject-making which opposes the hegemony of the transparent. They both embrace techniques of becoming dark or opaque in order to better become present in the ways that we want, but without being seen or apprehended.

Let’s revert back to the title: We Unleash Storms, Yet We Like the Sun presents a dichotomy, on the one hand an inability to stand still and on the other, a withdrawal from transparency. Pallotta and De Nicola reflect upon bodies reduced to their primary presence, a hard materiality, be it the cold steel of the screws, or the warm corporeality of the figure in the photographs.

A hard materiality that reshapes desires, reorients hopes and reimagines possibilities. A comfort zone where we can remain. In here we can retrace visionary perspectives. It ends with love, exchange, fellowship. It ends as it begins, in motion, in between various modes of being and belonging, and on the way to new economies of giving, taking, being with and for and it ends on the way to another place altogether.

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Exhibition View Duo Show «We Unleash Storms, Yet We Like the Sun» at Last Tango, Zurich, 2022-2023 / Photo: Kilian Bannwart / Courtesy: the artists and Last Tango

Exhibition View Duo Show «We Unleash Storms, Yet We Like the Sun; view on Lina Pallotta, Porpora - Bologna, 2015, digitally printed on Hahnemuhle FineArt Baryta 325 gr, 34 x 26 cm» at Last Tango, Zurich, 2022-2023 / Photo: Kilian Bannwart / Courtesy: the artist and Last Tango

Exhibition View Duo Show «We Unleash Storms, Yet We Like the Sun» at Last Tango, Zurich, 2022-2023 / Photo: Kilian Bannwart / Courtesy: the artists and Last Tango

Exhibition View Duo Show «We Unleash Storms, Yet We Like the Sun; view on Caterina de Nicola, Things you can’t buy: new hours and services, 2022, steel screws, metal scraps, dimensions variable» at Last Tango, Zurich, 2022-2023 / Photo: Kilian Bannwart / Courtesy: the artist and Last Tango

Exhibition View Duo Show «We Unleash Storms, Yet We Like the Sun; view on Caterina de Nicola, Things you can’t buy: new hours and services, 2022, found objects, spheres made of epoxy resin, screws and metal scraps, dimensions variable» at Last Tango, Zurich, 2022-2023 / Photo: Kilian Bannwart / Courtesy: the artist and Last Tango

Exhibition View Duo Show «We Unleash Storms, Yet We Like the Sun» at Last Tango, Zurich, 2022-2023 / Photo: Kilian Bannwart / Courtesy: the artists and Last Tango

Exhibition View Duo Show «We Unleash Storms, Yet We Like the Sun; view on Lina Pallotta, Porpora - Roma, 1990, Porpora - Maurizio - Roma, 1990 and Porpora - Europride - Roma, 2011» at Last Tango, Zurich, 2022-2023 / Photo: Kilian Bannwart / Courtesy: the artist and Last Tango

Exhibition View Duo Show «We Unleash Storms, Yet We Like the Sun» at Last Tango, Zurich, 2022-2023 / Photo: Kilian Bannwart / Courtesy: the artists and Last Tango

Exhibition View Duo Show «We Unleash Storms, Yet We Like the Sun; view on Lina Pallotta, Porpora - NYC, 1992, digitally printed on Hahnemuhle FineArt Baryta 325 gr, 36 x 24 cm» at Last Tango, Zurich, 2022-2023 / Photo: Kilian Bannwart / Courtesy: the artist and Last Tango

Exhibition View Duo Show «We Unleash Storms, Yet We Like the Sun; view on Lina Pallotta, Porpora - Porpora e Marco - Roma, 1991, digitally printed on Hahnemuhle FineArt Baryta 325 gr 60 x 40 cm» at Last Tango, Zurich, 2022-2023 / Photo: Kilian Bannwart / Courtesy: the artist and Last Tango