Occupazzioni: The Perpetual Dialogue.
The story begins during the night. Far away, near a cave, lives a woman with a child.
Beautiful but scary clouds gather outside of the cave. Their transparence captures unkind and challenging looks.
Beast mother is an exhibition of an Italian duo Grossi – Maglioni
and its main motive is the relationship of the mother with her child and the child’s adulting, maturing and becoming independent from the mother.
Authors drew from different sources of psychoanalytic writings, postfeminist discourse, anthropological literature
but also from sci-fi cinematography and literature.
They became interested in the moment when the motherhood and the mother are scary and her body becomes uncontrollable
and monstrous and a hybrid being emerges from her body. This can be often seen in sci-fi movies.
These are the main sources of inspiration.
Grossi and Maglioni were influenced by artists including Donna Haraway or Rosi Braidotti.
Authors also dealt with the ethymology of the word “monster”.
It comes from old Latin and has multiple meanings such as gryphon, satyr, a hybrid being, centaur,
but later, in old French also gained meanings like lighthouse or abode.
There are plenty of meanings of the word which can be found incorporated to this exhibition.
The core of the exhibition is a story called Occupazzioni: The Perpetual Dialogue
and it was created over a long period of time during different workshops led by the artists for mothers and children
in Rome, Novi Sad and other cities.
The story consists of multiple chapters and this exhibition includes two of them.
One being the cave – a dark and somber place which is also a tent – a tent of nurturing.
It is a result of authors‘ research of nomad architecture
and the tent represents the base point of the evolution of the relationship of the mother and the child.
The second chapter is the desert – a vast and empty place - the period when the child is leaving the mother.
Continuously this desert flourishes and comes to life by the touch of the child’s steps
making this a sign of a new life of the child.
An important part of the exhibition are the observing points which through which a focused look brings some new knowledge.
These points are situated throughout the entire exhibition making a path from one art piece to another.
One of these being a billow of clouds connected by targets which also lead to an observing point and towards the tent of nurturing.
The entire project also depicts the current pandemic situation
in which mothers, children and entire families were brought very close together for a long period of time, maybe sometimes longer than is comfortable.
They have to come up with new ways of coexistence for this togetherness to become more pleasurable.
Both artists are mothers and they both had a hard time during the spring lockdown,
so another part of this project is a manifest they wrote with the help of Sara Basta
called ‚Siamo noi le vere mostre!‘. They created a wordplay
including the Italian word ‚mostra‘ meaning exhibition but also a feminine form of the word monster.
This was to acknowledge that these women in their roles of single mothers or artists
having to be closed in homes with their children had no other way of making a living.
They tried to bring up this situation by this manifest aimed towards political figures,
later gaining a lot of attention and stirring up conversation within the Italian cultural scene.