Looking at our times through the prism of the moving image.
At Fondazione In Between Art Film, we foster dialogues between video, cinema, and performance, supporting artists and institutions whose visions cross the boundaries between creative disciplines.
NEWS
Four works by Karimah Ashadu, Basir Mahmood, Gerard Ortín Castellví, and Janis Rafa from our Collection will be screened on February 4, 2025, at @eye_film on the occasion of the launch of “VISIO Moving Images in Europe Since the 2010s.” Congratulations Karimah, Basir, Gerard, and Janis!
The screening will be followed by a conversation between Mahmood; Leonardo Bigazzi, editor of the publication and curator at the Fondazione; and Julian Ross, head of film programming & distribution at the Eye Filmmuseum, reflecting on the past decade in artists’ moving image in Europe
About the works:
Ashadu’s “Machine Boys” (2024), which we produced for the International Exhibition at @labiennale Arte 2024 in Venice, explores the informal economy of motorcycle taxis – colloquially known as ‘Okada,’ in the mega-city of Lagos. Banned a few years ago due to the government’s inability to regulate the industry, the work portrays a hardy group of bikers who continue this illegal work, seeking to attain financial autonomy and independence. For this work, Ashadu received the Silver Lion for a Promising Young Artist
Mahmood’s “Sunsets, Everyday” (2020), which we commissioned and produced on the occasion of the project “Mascarilla 19 – Codes of Domestic Violence,” studies domestic violence through codes of gesture and body language. The film received the Ammodo Tiger Short Award from @iffr 2021
Ortín Castellví’s “Bliss Point” (2024, Dutch premiere), which we co-produced with @schermodellarte, explores the operations of food supply and advertising in the age of automation and AI-managed warehouses
Rafa’s “Lacerate” (2020), which we also commissioned and produced on the occasion of “Mascarilla 19 – Codes of Domestic Violence,” reflects on the subject of domestic and gender violence by portraying the extreme decision of a woman who turns from victim into executioner
Ashadu, Mahmood, Ortín Castellví, and Rafa are four Europe-based artists who participated in the VISIO programme over the last ten years
Image courtesy of the artists, Fondazione In Between Art Film, and Lo schermo dell’arte
Congratulations to Andro Eradze, Basir Mahmood, and Ari Benjamin Meyers, whose films will have their premiere at @iffr 2025!
Mahmood’s “Brown Bodies in an Open Landscape are Often Migrating” (2024), which we commissioned and produced for our exhibition ‘Nebula,’ has been selected in the Art Directions: installations programme.
In the words of @evant_garde, curator and coordinator Art Directions & Lightroom at IFFR, “‘Brown Bodies in an Open Landscape Are Often Migrating’ raises questions around the gap between the experience of migrants and our consumption and spectation of their stories.”
🗓️ International premiere: January 31, 2025, at @katoenhuis
Eradze’s “Flowering and Fading” (2024), which we co-produced with @schermodellarte, has been selected in the Short & Mid-length programme.
According to Rebecca De Pas, member of IFFR’s selection committee for short films, “In his latest work, Andro Eradze shapes a new vision of surrealism, where impeccable image composition and a stunning sound work strike directly at the subconscious, submerging the senses in an ocean of absolute beauty”
🗓️ International premiere: February 3, 2025, at Cinerama 3. Followed by a Q&A with @leonardobigazzi, creative producer of the film
Meyers’ “Marshall Allen, 99, Astronaut” (2024), which we also commissioned and produced for our exhibition ‘Nebula’ at the Complesso dell’Ospedaletto in Venice, has been selected in the Short & Mid-length programme.
Rebecca De Pas also writes: “With this unconditional homage, Meyers offers us a privileged encounter with the work of a musician whose art seems born from the need to reach beyond our world”
🗓️ World premiere (festival): February 1, 2025 at Cinerama 4. Followed by a Q&A with the artist
Images courtesy of IFFR, the artists, and Fondazione In Between Art Film
Discover with us the works included in “Lantern With No Walls,” the first group exhibition organized by the Fondazione with works from its Collection
In “A Dream Dreaming a Dream” (2020) by Daniel Steegmann Mangrané (Spain, 1977), an electric, luminous being with the features of a panther roams through the lush Mata Atlântica, the first region that the Portuguese colonists came to in the early 16th century when they reached Brazil.
Deploying generative artificial intelligence, the artist produces a never-ending animation, within which the movements of this animal figure are determined randomly by the algorithm, enabling it to exist and move around in the environment even when the work is not being projected, thereby prefiguring the possibility of life forms that are not dependent on any human presence.
Scanning sections of forest with a system of tracking cameras, the artist obtained extremely vivid and realistic 3D images, which contrast with the pared-back graphical rendering of the panther.
The animal has the ability to illuminate the natural world in which it is immersed by moving around within it, and this power of emanation that it has creates a synthesis of past and present. On the one hand, we are facing a present and future scenario that entails the radical modification of nature on the part of mankind, while on the other we are reconnecting to the concept that indigenous Brazilian cultures had, and still have, of nature and its creatures as manifestations of the divine.
Curated by Leonardo Bigazzi, Alessandro Rabottini, and Paola Ugolini, “Lantern With No Walls” is open everyday at @tarmak22, Gstaad, until February 2, 2025
Image credit: Daniel Steegmann Mangrané, “A Dream Dreaming a Dream,” 2020. Still from single-channel video, real-time computer-generated animation, black and white, sound, infinite duration. Commissioned by and produced for St_age by Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary–TBA21. Fondazione In Between Art Film collection
Discover with us the works included in “Lantern With No Walls,” the first group exhibition organized by the Fondazione with works from its Collection
In “Winter Came Early” (2015) by Janis Rafa (Greece, 1984), we see the violent she will present a new action of a vehicle that, for ten interminable seconds, shakes an almond tree vigorously, causing its leaves to fall prematurely. Using a high-speed video camera shooting at 2000 frames per second, Rafa creates a glaring, melancholy metaphor that evokes a multiplicity of themes: from the unconditional exploitation of the environment by the human race, to the fragility of the equilibrium that we think we are establishing between nature and technology, all the way to the ineluctable transience of all forms of existence.
The surreal character of the situation to which we are spectators is indicative of Rafa’s artistic vision, which is characterized by meticulous enactments that capture the tension between the element of sensuality and the presence of something disturbing, between what looks like a slice of reality and what, in contrast, is the result of cinematographic fiction.
Curated by Leonardo Bigazzi, Alessandro Rabottini, and Paola Ugolini, “Lantern With No Walls” is open everyday at @tarmak22, Gstaad, until February 2, 2025
Image credit: Janis Rafa, “Winter Came Early,” 2015. Still from single-channel video, color, sound, 3’. Courtesy the artist Fondazione In Between Art Film collection
Discover with us the works included in “Lantern With No Walls,” the first group exhibition organized by the Fondazione with works from its Collection
“Becoming Alluvium” (2019–Ongoing) by Thao Nguyen Phan (Vietnam, 1987) is a work that looks at the Mekong River as a theater for social, political, environmental, and spiritual change across the centuries. Divided into three chapters, the work is an allegorical meditation on the concepts of destruction, reincarnation, and renewal.
The first chapter evokes the collapse of a dam and the fatal consequences for the villages downstream, through the reincarnation of two adolescent brothers as a dolphin and a water hyacinth. The second chapter is interwoven with images of modern, everyday life along the banks of the river, accompanied by extracts from the 1984 autobiographical novel, entitled “The Lover,” by Marguerite Duras (in which the writer describes her adolescence spent in French Indochina, today’s Vietnam), and from Italo Calvino’s story collection “Invisible Cities,” thereby expanding the exploration of the themes of travel and distance through the prism of literary invention. The final chapter reworks a local folktale that has as its protagonist a princess and which recounts her wish that human beings may recreate the beauty of nature through the manufacture of jewelry.
Phan creates a story that mixes up different timescales and visual languages, combining her love for tradition with her fears over the climate emergency and her understanding of the effects of the colonial past on the present.
Curated by Leonardo Bigazzi, Alessandro Rabottini, and Paola Ugolini, “Lantern With No Walls” is open everyday at @tarmak22, Gstaad, until February 2, 2025
Image credit: Thao Nguyen Phan, “Becoming Alluvium,” 2019–Ongoing. Still from single-channel video, color, sound, 16’ 40”. Commissioned and produced by Han Nefkens Foundation. In collaboration with Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona; WIELS – Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels; Chisenhale Gallery, London. Fondazione In Between Art Film collection
🗓️ Exhibition extended 🗓️
“Lantern With No Walls,” the first exhibition with works from our Collection, will close on February 2, 2025 to coincide with the opening weekend of “ENERGIES,” the 2025 edition of @elevation1049, which will be curated by @steffihessler and organized by Luma Foundation
“Lantern With No Walls” is held at @tarmak22 and responds to the striking landscape of the Bernese Alps surrounding the village of Gstaad in Switzerland. It offers a significant in-depth view on the directions that animate the Fondazione’s Collection, which was born out of the desire of our founder and president Beatrice Bulgari to support artists, scholars and institutions committed to exploring the expressive potential of moving images and the intersections between different artistic disciplines
Curated by @alessandro.rabottini @leonardobigazzi and @ugolinip, “Lantern With No Walls” takes the form of a mosaic of landscapes and scenery that fade into each other and suggest a continuous osmosis between past and present, human and non-human, individual existence and collective existence. The symbolic form of the lantern evokes the need for a source of light that makes it possible to traverse the landscape, as well as life, even when clouds seem to thicken on the horizon
Six video works by international artists @saodatismailova @masbedo @adrian_paci @thaonguyenphan_ @janisrafa and Daniel Steegmann Mangrané (@animal_que_no_existeix) are placed in dialogue with each other within a setting commissioned to the interdisciplinary studio @2050.plus, founded by @ippopeste
Visual identity: @lorenzomasonstudio
Discover with us the works included in “Lantern With No Walls,” the first group exhibition organized by the Fondazione with works from its Collection
“The Wanderers” (2021) by Adrian Paci (1969, Albania) is a metaphorical reflection—conceived during the years of the COVID-19 pandemic—on the relationship between the individual, the community, and time.
The images of this two-channel video installation take us to modern-day, rural Albania, with glimpses of different landscapes and the countryside that surrounds Shkodër, the artist’s home town. In the projection on the left, in limpid black and white, human beings and animals are filmed in slow motion as they cross a snowy, half-deserted street. In the projection on the right, in color, the movement of the figures along the road becomes more intense and frequent, as they appear in the frame only to then disappear from it shortly after. While on the left the lens follows the direction of movement, advancing together with our gaze and with the arrow of time from the present to the future, on the right the camera retreats, allowing the figures to emerge in the visual field only for them to then be immediately swallowed up by memory.
Paci paints a sorrowful portrait of humanity caught between solitude and the need for belonging, transforming the action of walking into a metaphor for the flow of existence, the abandonment of places, and the survival of memory. The work establishes a narrative through images, in which the relationship between History and individual existences transcends the presence of verbal language.
Curated by Leonardo Bigazzi, Alessandro Rabottini, and Paola Ugolini, “Lantern With No Walls” is open everyday at @tarmak22, Gstaad, until February 2, 2025
Image credit: Adrian Paci, The Wanderers, 2021. Still from two-channel video installation, b/w and color, sound, 34’ 40” (left channel) and 8’ 40” (right channel). Courtesy the artist; kaufmann repetto, Milan/New York; Peter Kilchmann Gallery, Zurich. Fondazione In Between Art Film collection
Discover with us the works included in “Lantern With No Walls,” the first group exhibition organized by the Fondazione with works from its Collection
The theme of incommunicability is at the center of “Teorema d’incompletezza” (Theorem of Incompleteness, 2008) by Masbedo (Nicolò Massazza, 1973, and Iacopo Bedogni, 1970, Italy). The video is set in Iceland, where ice and lava serve as a metaphorical representation of mutual incomprehension. This natural world, indifferent and hostile to human events, plays host, paradoxically, to a kitchen table, symbol of domestic intimacy, complete with glass dishes and utensils that are destined, over the course of just a few minutes, to shatter, as do the chairs and the table itself. We hear the words of a man and a woman continually interrupted by the violence of the scene.
The choice of Iceland, an island located on the far edge of Europe, manifests the feeling of solitude alongside the relationship between beauty, alienation and mystery. Created by the collision of the North American and Eurasian plates, this land is crossed by a long geological fault which, opening up by a further 3 centimeters every year, is gradually lacerating it. The landscape thus embodies the feeling of inner breakdown and relational distance, as well as a sense of the inexorable ruination of things.
Curated by Leonardo Bigazzi, Alessandro Rabottini, and Paola Ugolini, “Lantern With No Walls” is open everyday at @tarmak22, Gstaad, until February 2, 2025
Image credit: Masbedo, “Teorema d’incompletezza” [Theorem of Incompleteness], 2008. Still from single-channel video, color, sound, 5’ 38”. Courtesy the artists. Fondazione In Between Art Film collection