This new project in Beijing is inspired by the recent agreement for the construction of the largest coal plant in Asia. China relies on coal for about 70% of its needs. This Country is at the forefront leading the world rankings of countries which discharge into the atmosphere the greatest amount of greenhouse gases. Here, the atmosphere is so saturated with soot particles and heavy metals, that frequently producing one of the most interesting and disturbing 'natural' effect; the mist shields the sun and makes it look like the moon: a white circle appears in white.
"Me sunbathing in Beijing March 17 th 2012" is a tribute that deliberately quotes one of the greatest Italian artists of the twentieth century. It is a temporal and contextual reading of the work "Me sunbathing in Turin January 19th 1969" by Alighiero Boetti, who has been a key element of the Arte Povera movement and currently celebrated in London at the Tate Modern. Boetti used industrial materials, those ones that accompanied the economic boom of the '60s, in Turin, Italy. As well as China is using its own resources and is recognized for 'progress', a so outdated term that still evokes an irresistible charm.
Alighiero Boetti's work is reinterpreted and contextualized in a situation in which what is the most unusual finds in deed a reason. The 'white sun' is the result of an incredible growth, in which questions concerning the sustainability are actually cynical, paradoxically poetic, simply suffocating. In Beijing is easy to come across heaps of coal that heats families, sometimes the pungent burning smell is so heavy that you can hardly breathe.
A detail, presents in both works, makes it seem lighter: a butterfly. Boetti placed it upon his sculpture, while in Nacciarriti's is placed on the top of coal's mountain. In contemporary China, where symbolism is still very important and ubiquitous, this item evokes a drama. The butterfly is the beloved dead leaves in the form of this beautiful and delicate insects, so fragile that it can live only a few days ... The reality improperly makes all in vain. "We give the intelligence and beauty. I think that nature is a blind force, obtuse, running only for this fundamental principle of the existence, life." Alighiero Boetti
Andrea Nacciarriti, first prize winner at TernaPrize03, stays in Beijing from Feb 8th to Mar 31st 2012, for an art residence supported by lab-Yit | the platform for the Italian contemporary art in China.
Alessandro Rolandi, has invited Andrea Nacciarriti to joint the Social Sensibility Research & Development Program, where he is Founder and Manager Director.
The Social Sensibility R&D Program is an innovative strategic project with the aim to bring artistic research and creativity in contact with the working environment. It is structured around the idea to orient the artists' work towards developing sensibility among workers, managers and the steering committee of Bernard Controls. Every 3 months, the program invites a professional of the creative field to deliver a project (any kind of media..) whose goal is to help developing new possibilities of human action and interaction within the factory. The long-term intention is to establish partnerships and collaborations with academic, financial, artistic and political structures to explore all the further application of such a model to the field of industry, social research and education.
