17 March 2023, Nova Gorica / Gorizia
Final exhibition and dissemination meeting
Co.So! Artists for the Social 2022/23
Final exhibition and dissemination meeting
17 March 2023, Nova Gorica / Gorizia
On Friday 17 March 2023 on the border between Nova Gorica and Gorizia the final chapter of Co.So! Artists for the Social, an artistic project curated by Elena Tammaro and Rachele D’Osualdo of the ETRARTE Cultural Association aimed at raising awareness in the communities of Friuli Venezia Giulia and the cross-border area on the issues of mental health, inclusiveness and social well-being, now in its fourth edition.
Financed by the Friuli Venezia-Giulia Region, Co.So! Artists for the Social Pursues the initiation of changes, through art, in organisations operating in the field of mental health and disability, and in the territorial communities of which they are part. It is developed through a series of meetings and three artist residencies and workshops involving a dense network of cultural professionals, artists, local facilities, students and local communities.
The final exhibition, which will open on Friday 17th at 6 p.m. at the Carinarnica space (Erjavčeva 53, Nova Gorica / San Gabriele Pass) will be preceded by a meeting for the dissemination and exchange of good practices, which will be held from 2.30 to 4.30 p.m. at the Xcenter in Nova Gorica (Delpinova ulica 20, 5000 Nova Gorica), an experimental centre that promotes the meeting between creativity, innovation, entrepreneurship, art and education through workshops, meetings, exhibition projects and productive socialisation paths.
The exhibition will present the co-creations resulting from the workshops and artist residencies realised by the three invited artists with the host communities of this edition of the project, aimed at investigating the theme of “marginality”, understood as “a place of radical possibility, a space of resistance (…). A place capable of offering us the possibility of a radical perspective to look at, to create, to imagine alternatives and new worlds” (Bell Hooks, In Praise of the Margin. Writing in the dark, TAMU edizioni, Naples 2021)
Francesco Zanatta (Treviso, 1989; lives and works in Venice) lived and worked for a week with the operators and inhabitants of Villetta 2.0 in Gorizia. In his workshop La mano che sa vedere (The hand that knows how to see) Zanatta led the group to develop, through painting practice, a new perspective on the reality that surrounds us, that which is ordinary and apparently meaningless. The workshop path included lectures and discussions, walking and collecting objects, drawing and painting on paper and canvas, leading to the realisation of a large painting with shared authorship. The involvement of the students of class II A, Installer of electrical, civil and industrial systems of ENFAP in Gorizia broadened the target audience of the activity and allowed the comparison between people belonging to different contexts, but coexisting in the same territory, opening the doors of Villetta 2.0 to outsiders.
The artist residency of Carolina Pozzi (Seriate, 1994, lives and works in Lecco) took place at Casa Teresa in Aiello del Friuli. Home is where love is prompted users and operators of the centre to identify and portray ‘objects of affection’, childhood puppets, everyday objects, small inanimate things to which the attribution of an emotional bond confers a special vitality. The objects were individually portrayed live or on the basis of childhood memories on backdrops that, like wallpaper, created a domestic corridor of affection; they were then broken down into elementary forms, freely reassembled in a large collage in which figuration gives way to a dynamic and abstract composition. The workshop concluded with a meeting with the local community of Aiello del Friuli, hosted by the Municipal Library, in which the workshop participants presented the results and processes of the activities: an important opportunity not only to reaffirm the role of the arts in contemporary society, but also to valorise the presence and contributions of often ‘marginal’ and little-visible situations.
The artist Michele Tajariol (Pordenone 1985; lives and works in Venice) was involved in a double workshop activity: In mille pezzi is the title of the workshop that involved two classes of the ISIS Pertini school in Monfalcone and Cantiere dei Desideri, a theatre association in Fiumicello Villa Vicentina, which features people with disabilities. The path developed in the collective writing of a narrative, in the definition of a character and its characterisation and finally in its formalisation: a character composed of multiple fragments, reassembled in one or more possible forms, to be disassembled and reassembled at will. A reminder of the need to ‘put the pieces back together’ when we go into crisis and seem to ‘fall apart’.
The exhibition, curated by Altreforme, Udine, includes videos made by Claudio Cescutti, who collected images, gestures and words of the artists and workshop participants.
At the dissemination and good practice exchange meeting at the Xcenter, they will bring their experiences: Tea Taramino, from the Associazione Forme in Bilico in Turin, which carries out activities at the intersection of the worlds of education, art, school and therapy, particularly enhancing the creativity that arises on the margins; BridA/Tom Kerševan, Sendi Mango and Jurij Pavlica, an internationally active Slovenian art group that creates works, experiences and participatory workshops that arise from the encounter between art, science and new technologies; Erica Costantini of the Trieste CLIC Association – Psychology and Psychomotricity, who will moderate the meeting and highlight the psychological mechanisms and relational dynamics that are activated in these artistic interventions within socially fragile contexts; Elena Tammaro and Rachele D’Osualdo of ETRARTE, who will present some of the 12 artistic workshop experiences produced by the Co. So! Artists for the Social, of which this meeting closes the fourth edition.
The meeting will be held in English.
The double appointment in Gorizia, part of a multi-year project coherent with the policies of the territory, converges towards the objectives of GO! 2025, involving Italian and Slovenian cultural and social structures and operators with artistic activities that generate spin-offs in terms of social inclusion and community cohesion, inhabiting the cross-border space and making the borders not only territorial, but also disciplinary, fluid and permeable.
The Partners
The project, conceived by Elena Tammaro and curated with Rachele D’Osualdo, is financed by the Friuli Venezia-Giulia Region and realised in collaboration with important operational partners, according to a logic of networking and shared planning: Creaa Snc, a creative enterprise from Udine active in the communication of cultural projects and in the production of artistic projects; Associazione Fondazione Malutta, a fluid collective with over thirty artists between the ages of 20 and 40, heterogeneous in terms of artistic disciplines and geographical origin, based in Venice; Altreforme cooperative society, active in the production of audiovisuals, educational activities and exhibition projects; the consortium of social cooperatives Il Mosaico, which operates in the provinces of Gorizia and Udine and pursues the general interest of its community in the human promotion and social integration of its citizens; Cantiere dei Desideri, an intensive workshop of theatrical expressiveness, based in Fiumicello Villa Vicentina, which includes people with disabilities; Associazione CLIC Trieste – Psicologia e Psicomotricità carries out activities aimed at promoting well-being, preventing discomfort, treating post-traumatic outcomes and disseminating knowledge in these areas; Društvo humanistov Goriške Slovenia – a Slovenian association that organises Mesto knjige (Book Fair), active in the production of cultural events, publishing productions and coordinates the Carinarnica location the Associazione Forme in Bilico in Turin, which carries out activities at the intersection of the worlds of education, art, school and therapy, particularly enhancing the creativity that is born in the margins; ISIS Sandro Pertini in Monfalcone, a professional high school whose course of study, Social and Health Services, trains young people eager to work in personal services, from the educational to the social-health sphere; GO! 2025 Evropska prestolnica kulture, Nova Gorica: a public body of the city of Nova Gorica established to promote and coordinate the activities of GO! 2025, Nova Gorica European Capital of Culture.
Technical sheet
Co.So! Artists for the Social 2022/23
ExhibitionOpening: Friday 17 March at 6 pm
Dates and opening hours: from 17 to 30 March; entrance to the venue on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m.; some contents are visible from the public space even after opening hours.
Venue: Carinarnica (Erjavčeva 53, Nova Gorica / St. Gabriel’s Crossing)
Free entrance
Dissemination and best practice exchange meeting
Date: 17 March 2023, from 14.30 to 16.30
Venue: Xcenter in Nova Gorica (Delpinova ulica 20, 5000 Nova Gorica)
Free entrance
For more information:
www.associazionetrarte.it