Senza Titolo
Un lungo viaggio immobile
by Mauro Sambo
curated by Chiara Bertola
Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venice
21 April - 26 May 2002
“I feel the liquid part of your body evaporate, I feel it on me like the tears of forgotten islands.”
(Mauro Sambo)
Un lungo viaggio immobile (A long immobile journey) is a route from Venice to Greece, or more precisely from the Querini Stampalia Palace to the Dodecanese island of Astypalaia (Stampalia), which was owned by the Querini family for a long time.
Un lungo viaggio immobile took shape via manuscripts, nautical maps, documents preserved in the Venetian library and a photo of the island taken via satellite and downloaded from the internet: a journey from Stampalia to Stampalia.
It is a journey that despite starting from a local, almost private point, as the story of a family, the Fondazione Querini Venice manages to open up and project itself into a more universal dimension through the routes of the imagination. This local and universal dimension then develops a more historical and political sense, projecting the outline of the island of Astypalaia in the abandoned and finite space of the Artiglierie at the Arsenale: places that were once a vital expression of the Serenissima Republic’s supreme power. Closing the exhibition is the photo of the manuscript of Astypalaia on which the artist has made a mould germinate in the form of the island itself. The photo of the manuscript is a fitting close to the story of this journey, leaving us to imagine other possible journeys enclosed within it.
“I can use a map to go from one side of my mind to the other.” (Mauro Sambo)
Un lungo viaggio immobile is part of the SMF 5252 project, which takes its name from the address of the Fondazione situated in Campo Santa Maria Formosa 5252, thus underlining the idea of ‘home’, of a place and a space to inhabit with cultural activities that also relate to the city. The project developed from the desire to offer visibility and support to the most interesting contemporary cultural research and projects of our region and placing them in relation to national and international projects, promoting relationships and exchanges with other foreign institutes.
Catalogue: Mauro Sambo. Un lungo viaggio immobile / Mauro Sambo: A Long Immobile Journey
Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venice, 2002
Texts by: Giorgio Busetto, Chiara Bertola, Mauro Sambo
Complete with musical CD