A group show curated by Anna Chiarini, featuring artists Abigail Burt, Anna Chiarini, Conor O’Sullivan, Gabriela Zigova & Jelena Curcic, Gillian McIver, Eva Orupõld, Isabella Vento, Jonathan Comerford, Lucie Kordacova, Samuel Thomson, Tünde Valiszka, Xuân Sinden & Vytas, live music performance by FEMI
The Steamship PS, 10-11/05/2019
Description
In Calvino’s book ‘The Invisible Cities’, Marco Polo meets The Great Kublai Khan and recounts to him the beautiful, impossible cities he has travelled through.
‘Kublai Khan does not necessarily believe everything Marco Polo says when he describes the cities visited on his expeditions, but the emperor of the Tartars does continue listening to the young Venetian with greater attention and curiosity than he shows any other messenger or explorer of his’.
This is because Marco tells him the reasons why humans decide to create and gather in such places, reasons beyond any discomfort or crisis.
Cities are places of exchange, not only of material goods but an exchange of memories, desires, ideas, languages.
The Invisible City is the one that used to be and the one that hasn’t been built yet, it’s the city we dream to live in, the one that goes unobserved by its commuters, and the one only the fresh eyes of a traveller can see.
The Invisible City is the one that can be seen solely through an individual’s experience and the one only a collectivity can realise. The Invisible City is what hides underneath the asphalt and what floats above it. It’s the network that unites its citizens.
‘Invisible City’ hosts artists from all media that, just like Marco, can make Kublai Khan reflect upon his empire and the magic that inhabits it.
The exhibition showcases works investigating the nature of the city, its infrastructure, inhabitants, its past and future: Will the Invisible City crumble or will it escape its gnawing termites?
The Steamship 