Canicula at Fondazione in Between Art Film

Curated by Alessandro Rabottini and Leonardo Bigazzi

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INTRODUCTION

Canicula is the third and final chapter of the ‘Trilogy of Uncertainties,’ a series of exhibitions initiated by Fondazione In Between Art Film in 2022 at the Complesso dell’Ospedaletto in Venice. Over the course of six years, we have invited artists from various parts of the world to reflect on three different atmospheric metaphors that condition the act of seeing, out of a desire to explore the restlessness of the present day and to compose a polyphonic fresco on a time like ours, permeated as it is by uncertainty.

This trilogy has allowed us to manifest fully what is the Fondazione’s mission – to support artists and expand the culture of moving image – by producing a total of 24 video works commissioned from 29 international artists, and bringing their vital, probing visions to the attention of those visiting the Biennale Arte.

The Complesso dell’Ospedaletto and the city of Venice have provided the backdrop for this tale of light and sound, a stage set awash with shadows and reflections that has warmly welcomed and inspired us time and again.

The conclusion of the ‘Trilogy of Uncertainties,’ also marks a new beginning, in the hope that our commitment towards the circulation of moving images may continue to inspire artists and the public as they navigate a path through the complexities of the present moment.

- Beatrice Bulgari, President, Fondazione In Between Art Film

THE EXHIBITION

Canicula brings to an end the ‘Trilogy of Uncertainties,’ a cycle of exhibitions exploring the status of moving images in contemporary art. Each chapter is inspired by a particular environmental condition in which sight is put to the test, thus completing a narrative arc that began with the ambiguous half-light of Penumbra (2022), followed up by the disorienting fog of Nebula (2024), before reaching the excess of light and heat that mark this year’s Canicula.

The Latin term ‘canicula’ is used in certain parts of the world to denote the warmest days of summer and, for various ancient Mediterranean cultures, this period of the year signified either propitious abundance or catastrophic drought. The exhibition takes on the blinding light and torrid heat that characterise these ‘dog days’ as metaphors for our present, a historical moment saturated with extreme conditions and distortions.

Through eight video installations commissioned from ten international artists and produced by the Fondazione, Caniculaaddresses multiple contemporary forms of overload and pressure, placing at the centre of the narrative the individual and collective responses to a cultural landscape consumed by technology, eroded by inequalities and polluted by propaganda, which seems to be moving ever-closer to a critical threshold. The works explore the psychological, political and social dimensions of an intolerable climate: scorching heat and blinding light are here interpreted not just as dangerous agents for bodies and for the environment, but also as the symbol of what is devouring social values and individual consciousnesses. Contributing to the image of imminent collapse that the exhibition summons up are the themes of information, control, war, science, consumption, the production of memory, and the administration of power and truth.

All of the works were conceived in close spatial and narrative relation to the surroundings of the Complesso dell’Ospedaletto and to the historical and existential implications that, for centuries, this former hospital and religious complex for the care of body and soul, has been emanating.

The scenography designed by the multidisciplinary 2050+ studio creates a route in which the spaces come across as isolated and protected, while the materials evoke the erosive action of mugginess and sunlight, as if in an effort to stem the destructive potential of these external agents.

Like Penumbra and Nebula before it, Canicula questions the nature of vision, its limits and its poetic resources; the questions posed are inspired by an atmospheric condition that, once again, investigates the senses, undermining the reliability of sight and the interpretations of the real that it generates.

- Alessandro Rabottini, artistic director, Fondazione In Between Art Film
- Leonardo Bigazzi, curator, Fondazione In Between Art Film