Rong Wrong

DIRECTED BY DESIRE

Directed by Desire is conceived and curated by Daphne Vitali and Arnisa Zeqo and taking place in rongwrong, Amsterdam from 15 May to 2 July, 2022.

Contributions by Eleni Bagaki, Mirella Bentivoglio, Tomaso Binga, Becket MWN, Quinn Latimer, Aliki Panagiotopoulou, Iris Touliatou, Raffaela Naldi Rossano and Myrto Xanthopoulou.

Rongwrong team: Vincent Verhoef and Arnisa Zeqo

OPENING 14 MAY, 6-8 PM
ON VIEW UNTIL 2 JULY, 2022


Iris Touliatou
Happiness, 2018 to 2022 (to Laurie), 2022
Unread email inbox, subscriptions, alerts, software, counters, verses, LCD screen, carton, magnets, loans
Dimensions variable
(production still)

The exhibition brings together the work of mainly women artists based in Greece, Italy and the Netherlands. The works deal with notions of desire, love, exhaustion and unfulfilled relationships. The sensitivity of the artists weaves together the personal with the political. The artworks invite us to think about the power of interpersonal relationships and their effects in daily life. The exhibition presents both existing and newly commissioned works that move between longing for a person and for human solidarity altogether.

Directed by Desire addresses issues of affect and intimacy in the form of longing, frustration, tiredness, personal turmoil and tensions. These are emotions and situations often felt and experienced in our daily lives that determine artistic creativity. In the exhibition, personal stories and imagined fantasies become strategies to confront the complexities of achievements, failures, self-negation, and love. Sensual pleasure and desire are linked with uneasy and demanding conditions, such as distance, disillusionment and abandonment. The artists’ works engage different registers of intimacy and proximity and act as vehicles for emotional engagement. The artworks were developed between Athens, Rome, Naples and Amsterdam.

Many of the artists participating hold a particular relation to language, writing, visual poetry and artists’ books. In 1978 artist and curator Mirella Bentivoglio curated the exhibition Materializzazione del Linguaggio (Materialization of Language) that showcased 80 women artists working with verbo-visual experiments at the Magazzini del Sale in Venice within the framework of the Venice Biennale of that year. The exhibition introduced a specific terminology that was attempting to widen the relationship between gender and language. Bentivoglio reflected on examples of works that existed between language, image and object, and what she called “messages of ambiguous nature which move in the field of transgression”. In the exhibition at rongwrong, four decades later, the “materialization of language” is presented through few historical works and through a dialogue with contemporary artists and writers who are closely looking at legacies of desire and fictions of the self.

The exhibition was conceived before the Covid-19 pandemic but developed during that time, in a period of uncertainty and emotional instability and when notions of human solidarity, companionship and respect were threatened. This exhibition emerges from a need to think about these issues and provides a space to process them. The title of the exhibition is borrowed from a verse by American poet, intellectual and activist June Jordan (1936 – 2002) who has been an important reference for the curators while thinking of the power of the word and poetic sensibilities in relation to ideas of affect. Jordan writes about the erotic charges of bodies, reclaiming desire and love as important interlocutors and contributors on political discourse.

Most of the artists in the exhibition talk about love, autobiography and frustration as a way to make an entry point in a wider political discourse. Personal struggles are connected to collective symptoms of alienation and hope. How can the longing for one person become entangled with longing for a wider solidarity? How can autobiography as fiction become a tool to liberate subjectivity from prescribed identity roles? The artists’ voices create personal diaries and use words to tell, words to challenge, redefine and deconstruct the unsaid; words that matter, words that communicate, but also words that are unable to do so.

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The curators wish to thank all the contributing artists and writers, NEON Foundation, Paolo Cortese and Francesco Romano Petillo of gramma_epsilon gallery, Danai Giannoglou and Vassilis Papageorgiou of Enterprise Projects, and Vivian Ziherl.

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The exhibition is made possible with the support of NEON Organization for Culture and Development.

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The exhibition has benefited from the kind institutional support of Enterprise Projects, Athens.

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SELECTION OF IMAGES


Eleni Bagaki
Making a film in solitude and in conversation with others, 2019, Fogo Island, Canada.
Video flat screen or projection, headphones, dvd player
(videostill)
Courtesy of the artist and Eleni Koroneou



Eleni Bagaki
She Left, She Left Again, She left Once More, 2022
A5 prints / pages from the artist’s book She Left, She Left Again, She left Once More
(detail)
Courtesy of the artist and Eleni Koroneou



Iris Touliatou
Happiness, 2018 to 2022 (to Laurie), 2022
Unread email inbox, subscriptions, alerts, software, counters, verses, LCD screen, carton, magnets, loans
Dimensions variable
(production still)
Courtesy of the artist



Becket MWN
Fragment 8, 2022
Stenciled acrylic
Dimensions variable
Courtesy of the artist



Quinn Latimer
Images TK or, I had been dreaming in subtitles this very night like some wet dark denim, 2021
Ink on paper, 297 x 420 mm - triptych
(detail)
Courtesy of the artist



Myrto Xanthopoulou
πάμε σπίτι / can we go home, 2022
notebook cover, cigarette box paper, 20x29 cm



Tomaso Binga
Propitiatory letter, 1996
26,5 x 27 cm
Courtesy Gramma_Epsilon Gallery, Athens



Mirella Bentivoglio
Void in the Center, 1968
26,7 x 24,5 cm
Courtesy Gramma_Epsilon Gallery, Athens



Mirella Bentivoglio
Adieu to the Trees, 1971
21x18 cm
Courtesy Gramma_Epsilon Gallery, Athens



Raffaela Naldi Rossano
Skin I - II - III, 2019
Rubber, organic materials, variable sizes
Courtesy of the artist


BIOGRAPHIES
Curators
Daphne Vitali is a Greek/Italian art historian and Curator at the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens (EMST) where she has curated and co-curated numerous group and solo exhibitions as well as new commissioned works of Greek and international artists. She has also been invited to curate exhibitions in museums and independent spaces like DEPO, Istanbul; Galleria Nazionale d’ Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rome; Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki; Quarter Centro Produzione Arte, Florence; Recent exhibitions and projects: When the Present is History, DEPO, in the framework of the 16th Istanbul biennial (2019), which travelled to MOMus–Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki (2021); Deeper than Silence, Ancient Roman Agora, Athens (2020); Everything Is in a State of Change, Goethe Institute, Athens (2021); Those winged words, Fondazione Giuliani, Rome (2021). Forthcoming exhibition: Antonis Pittas jaune, geel, gelb, yellow, EMST, June 2022. She has published essays in international periodicals such as Kunstforum International, Mousse magazine, Artpulse, NERO, feministiqa, and has authored and edited many artists’ catalogues. She has participated in conferences, talks and curators’ programs internationally and she has been a member of committees and juries such as the DESTE Prize, the Future of Europe art prize, ARTWORKS fellowship program of the Niarhos Foundation, Tossati Value Prize for Artissima, selection committee for the Greek Pavilion of the Venice Biennale.

Arnisa Zeqo is an art historian, curator and educator based in Amsterdam. She co- founded rongwrong together with Antonia Carrara in 2012. Recently she was researcher in residence at the Rijksakademie, Amsterdam. In 2015-2017 she worked for documenta 14 in Athens and Kassel, responsible for the education programs (aneducation) in Athens and initiator of the Society of Friends of Ulises Carrion within the Parliament of Bodies. The writings of Jane Bowels and June Jordan give a liberating feeling to her methodologies

Vincent Verhoef (Netherlands, 1982) is an artist and art historian who lives and works in Amsterdam. He attended the University of Amsterdam, the Gerrit Rietveld Academy and the Jan van Eyck Academy. Verhoef's recent work has been shown in gallery Akinci, gallery Fons Welters, puntWG and Bradwolff Projects in Amsterdam and in gallery The Breeder and Hot Wheels Projects in Athens. He filmed himself sweeping the terrace of his home in Athens and dedicated a neon light to the Roman Emperor Julian the Apostate. He still reads Michel Foucault because the end of modernity never seems to happen. Since 2012, he has been involved with artspace rongwrong in Amsterdam.


Artists and writers
Eleni Bagaki holds a Master’s in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins, London. Her solo exhibitions have taken place at Eleni Koroneou gallery, Athens; Chauffeur, Sydney; Palette Terre, Paris; Radio Athènes, Athens; Signal, Malmö; New Studio, London; ReMap, Athens. She has participated in group exhibitions internationally, such as L’Inconnue Gallery, Montreal, at the Benaki Museum with the DESTE Foundation and the New Museum of New York, Athens and at Family Business, New York. She has been an artist in residence in programs such as Hordaland Kunstsenter, Bergen (2020), Fogo Island Arts, Fogo Island (2019), Iaspis, Stockholm (2018-2019), Pivô, São Paulo (2018, with an artist’s scholarship), and the Kantor Foundation, Krakow (2017). She was a fellow in the Artworks Artist Fellowship Program at Stavros Niarchos Foundation (2020-21).

Mirella Bentivoglio (1922–2017) was born in Klagenfurt, Austria, to Italian parents and grew up in Milan. Her linguistic studies in Switzerland and London were interrupted by World War II, and during this period, she used her father’s extensive library as a home-based university. Unlike most poets, Bentivoglio presents poetry “liberated” from the traditional printed page. The artist played with words, breaks rules of syntax, detaches words from phrases, and isolates letters from words. The results of these experiments—concrete and visual poems—are perceived as symbols and metaphors. She also created unique artists’ books, often made from unusual materials such as marble, wood, metal, and earth, and published limited-edition portfolios. She was a renowned sculptor and performance artist. She curated many exhibitions of work by women artists in Italy and all over the world.

Tomaso Binga an Italian artist and writer (who was married to the art critic Filiberto Menna) explained that she chose a male pseudonym in order to parody the cultural privileges reserved for men. This ploy to discredit the art world, passing by way of a disguised sexual identity (a theme which occurs throughout her work), started with a demystification of the difference between the sexes in writing and language. She lives in Rome, where, since 1970, she has carried on her tireless activity involving the organization of avant-garde events with performances, collages, video and sonic poetry works, and painting, involving nothing less than a contamination of codes—writing, gestures, bodies, signs, sounds and images—, very frequently pushed to the limits of meaninglessness, as, for example, in E non uscire di casa [And don’t leave the house](1977), Abecedario (1981), Indovina cos’è [Guess what it is] (1987), Rimerotiche [Erotic rhymes] (1992) and Vorrei essere un vigile urbano [I’d like to be a traffic policeman].

Becket MWN is an artist based in Amsterdam whose recent projects have focused on the relation between language and the production of the self, and media and current forms of subjectivity. His work often takes the form of text, audio and sculpture. Recent solo and two-person exhibitions include Sitcom Architecture, Kevin Space Kunstverein, Vienna (2022); The Actress (with Aimée Zito-Lema), Grazer Kunstverein, Graz (2021); and The inside of my inside is my outside, Broadway, Amsterdam (2020). Recent group shows include Chewing Fat, Kristina Kite Gallery, Los Angeles (2021); SECOND, Fri Art Kunsthalle, Fribourg (2021); and Searching the Sky for Rain, SculptureCenter, New York (2019). A two-person show with Marina Pinsky will open at The Tail, Brussels (July 2022).

Quinn Latimer is a California-born poet, critic, editor, and occasional curator whose work often explores feminist economies of writing, reading, and image production. Her books include Like a Woman: Essays, Readings, Poems (Sternberg Press, 2017), Sarah Lucas: Describe This Distance (Mousse Publishing, 2013), Film as a Form of Writing: Quinn Latimer Talks to Akram Zaatari (Wiels, 2013), and Rumored Animals (Dream Horse Press, 2012). Her performance and text-based work has been exhibited widely, including at REDCAT, Los Angeles; Chisenhale Gallery, London; CCS, Paris; and Sharjah Biennial 13. She is coeditor, with Kateryna Botanova, of Amazonia: Anthology as Cosmology (Sternberg Press, 2021), and previously she was editor-in-chief of publications for documenta 14 in Athens and Kassel. She is now Head of the MA at Institut Kunst Gender Natur, in Basel, where, with Chus Martínez, she organizes a semiannual symposia series on questions of gender, language, social justice, and artistic practice. She will curate SIREN, an exhibition on poetics at Amant Foundation, New York, in 2022.

Aliki Panagiotopoulou is based in Athens, Greece. She more recently exhibited alarm hand and text at Radio Athènes (Athens, 2021). Other recent contributions and participation include Rallou Panagiotou’s Pocket Microclimate: A Response, ART PAPERS (2022), Anti Structure, DESTE Foundation, Athens (2021), Lives of an object, ARCH & Melas Martinos, Athens (2021), Statues that don't speak, don't talk, don't laugh, Pavlou Bakoyianni square, Kalliga/Karamanlaki square, Basketball court on Samara and Kampouroglou St., Athens (2020) and Mahler & LeWitt Studios residency, Spoleto (2019).

Iris Touliatou (b. 1981, Athens) lives and works in Athens, Greece. Recent solo exhibitions include Organs at EXILE, Vienna (2020); and Overnight at Radio Athènes , Athens (2019). Touliatou has been part of group exhibitions at the New Museum Triennial, Soft Water Hard Stone (2021); the 7th Athens Biennial, Eclipse (2021); Work and Leisure, Milan (2022), When I state I am an anarchist at PLATO, Ostrava (2022) Anabasis at Rodeo Gallery (2022); Lives of an object at ARCH / Andreas Melas (2021); The Way In at Haus N Athen (2021); Anti Structure at DESTE Foundation (2021); Interval at Goethe-Institut Athen (2021) The Same River Twice, Benaki Museum, Athens (2019), Manifesta 12, 5x5x5 : Selected Projects, Palermo (2018) among others. She was an artist in residence at ISCP (2021), ARTWORKS SNF Fellow (2021) and received the art prize Europas Zukunft from GFZK Leipzig (2013). In June 2022 Touliatou will have a solo exhibition at Grazer Kunstverein.

Raffaela Naldi Rossano (b. 1990) lives and works in Naples. Through the activation of transformative processes, she engages in the investigation of new possible relationships and forms of intimacy, care and revelation, both psychological and socio- economical, between spaces, bodies and objects. Her installations, integrating sculptures, moving image, sound, group experiences and poetry, are conceived as spaces of transition where meaning around hidden and suppressed histories, individual or collective, is re-created and exposed. Through them, she aims to pursue a breakdown of the architectural environment and a feminist re- appropriation of space and landscape, in a poetic articulation of the territory. Raffaela Naldi Rossano is currently working on an on-going research and film project which revolves around the myth of the Siren Parthenope—the founding myth of the city of Naples. Raffaela Naldi Rossano was one of the participating artists in the 2020 edition of Quadriennale D’Arte, Rome, curated by Sarah Cosulich and Stefano Collicelli Cagol. Among her recent exhibitions: Utopia Distopia: il mito del progresso partendo dal Sud, curated by Kathryn Weir, Madre, Naples (2021); There is no Time to Enjoy the Sun, Fondazione Morra Greco, Naples (2021); Waves between Us, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Guarene; I Confess, curated by Chus Martinez, der TANK, Basel (2019); Doing Deculturalization, Museion, Bolzano (2019); Partenope, Aetopoulos, Athens (2019); May the Bridges I Burn, Manifesta, Palermo (2018).

Myrto Xanthopoulou was born in Helsinki in 1981. She lives and works in Athens. Her practice is characterized by the use of everyday materials, handicraft and text. Her work consists of installations, sculptures and drawings, which attempt to articulate a poetic of the ordinary and the intimate, the unbearable and the silly. In 2020 she presented her fourth solo show in Athens, titled ΜΠΟΥΦΑΝ, and she has participated in various exhibitions in Greece and abroad, at museums, galleries and independent art spaces. She has been awarded the SNF ARTWORKS fellowship (2020).

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