Art between Italy and China today

Alessandro Cardinale, Nüshu, 2024, Cotton and wood, 84 × 84 × 14 cm


The Nüshu - Writing the Void project, born in collaboration between the Museum of Oriental Art and Arte Italiana, explores the culture of the different populations of China through the contemporary reinterpretation of the Italian artist Alessandro Cardinale, who was awarded the 1st Prize at the V Beijing International Art Biennial in China in 2012. The exhibition, curated by Anna Lisa Ghirardi and Marta Boscolo Marchi, director of the Museum of Oriental Art, presents ten sculptures, including five new works created specifically for the occasion, inspired by the territories of Hunan and the women of the Yao culture and their hermetic writing. A communicative code, no longer in use today, which for a long time represented the silent voice of people forced to live in semi-slavery, finds an unprecedented sounding board in the rooms of the Museum of Oriental Art where the artist decides to "write the void" left by so many silent existences through the assembly of thin strips of shaped canvas or parallel iron elements, capable of outlining an image that can appear and disappear based on the position assumed by the visitor in the space.



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