The Big Picture
Sophie Desrosiers x Lorenzo Vitturi x Natalia Bobadilla
MARDI 8 DÉCEMBRE 2020, 18H – 20H
TUESDAY DECEMBER 8, 2020, 6 – 8 PM – Paris time
With The Big Picture, the Centre photographique offers to take a step back from the work of the exhibited author, in this case the Italian artist Lorenzo Vitturi, to consider it in its broadest sense, by illuminating it with the light of personalities from other disciplinary fields.
How does Sophie Desrosiers, an anthropologist specializing in the history of textiles, view Lorenzo Vitturi’s astonishing Venetian-Peruvian crossbreeding?
What does the organizational theory researcher and explorer of third places Natalia Bobadilla see in these market aisles in London and Lagos, theaters of the artist’s installations?
Two conversations, in English, to talk about society.
Program
6 PM Paris time – DURATION : 45 MN
ALL IS METISSAGESophie Desrosiers in conversation with Lorenzo Vitturi
In response to the title of Lorenzo Vitturi’s exhibition – Nulla è puro -, Tout est mé-tissage (All is mé-tissage) offers a reading of textiles overwhelmingly present in the artist’s work and, through them, of his attempt to establish a dialog between two regions of the world to which his life is bound: his mother’s Peru and his father’s Italy. Wool and cotton fabrics from the Andes are interwoven with Venetian silks, adorned with pieces of Murano glass whose production his father initiated in the south of Lima in the 1960s. The deserts surrounding Paracas and Nasca, renowned for the very refined pre-Hispanic textiles uncovered by archaeologists, serve as neutral backdrops for sculptures composed of various materials and artifacts but more specifically of brightly colored threads and textiles from local artisan workshops or recycled from industrial output. They are in stark contrast with the Venetian lagoon interpsersed with installations meant to spread out and dry nets on which, as if they had always been there, are cast local textiles and many others from the Andes. The textile dialog between the Andes and Western Europe began almost five centuries ago and the dynamic of this history is constantly revitalized. Sophie Desrosiers will endeavor to show how Lorenzo Vitturi’s photographs inscribe themselves in this apparent tricky intercultural dialog for the fabric designs have been so dissimilar in the Peruvian Andes and in Italy, especially in Venice.
Sophie Desrosiers is an anthropologist and honorary associate professor at EHESS (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales) in Paris. Her research focuses on the long-term history and anthropology of textiles, in the Andes on the one hand, and on the other hand in the old world with a focus on silks. She has investigated current weaving practices in various communities in the highlands of Bolivia and Peru, and she has been interested in the silks produced in central and northern Italy from the late 12th century. These two areas of textile studies do not overlap except in the way of approaching them by insisting on the materials, their qualities and their colors, and on the technical processes implemented to transform them, processes through which we can evaluate their designers’ forms of thought, experiences and sensibilities.
7 PM Paris time – DURATION : 45 MN
MARKETS AS THIRD PLACES: WORK, IDENTITIES AND POLITICS
Natalia Bobadilla in conversation with Lorenzo Vitturi
People make markets, but markets also make people. As an organizational researcher, markets constitute interesting objects to make sense of complex organizational and working dynamics that extend across time and space. In this conversation with Lorenzo Vitturi, the idea is to question what markets actually are, physically, aesthetically and conceptually. Can they be considered as third places or free spaces? How can art reflect daily actions in marketplaces and express the subjectivity and vibrancy that informs them?
Natalia Bobadilla is an assistant professor in strategy and theory of organizations at the IAE of Rouen – University of Rouen-Normandy-France. Her research focuses on organizational changes and their effects on individuals, teams and urban territories. She is currently coordinating a research project on work in cultural and creative third places. She uses longitudinal, process-based methods, participatory observation and art to explore the temporal, spatial and aesthetic dimensions of change. Natalia Bobadilla has contributed to collective research that has resulted in publications in various international and national journals.