Serie Inversa
Alice Benessia
Turin – at the Diogene Tram on Wednesday, June 10th, there will be one of the last meetings of this season’s Reverse Series, preceding the annual exhibition scheduled for the month of July in various areas located in the Barriera di Milano neighborhood. This time the Series, through which the Diogene Project has been undertaking a survey on artistic practices that are being consolidated in Piedmont, will host the artist Alice Benessia (1973, Turin).
In her research, the artist from Turin considers the act of photographing in a paradoxical way, and as she has said, she seeks to “use an instrument that contextualizes, in order to remove any contextualization from one’s own way of looking, at oneself and the outside world”. Her research, practice, and use of photography are interpreted as possible routes of not only investigating vision and perception, but also of an opportunity for exploring a broader state of being: “for remembering and refining one’s ability to be present, and thus aware of what lives in us and around us, and therefore, ready and open to evolving over time”. In this sense, the ontological status of photography, in which it becomes an art of presence, is overturned: hence, learning to be in a space and in a definite time, in a dynamic relationship with the light and with the flow of external and internal events. As we read in the presentation of one of her pieces: “Most of our theories about the world, and most of our way of living in it, depend on how we look around. To suspend the preconceived sense of what we encounter, and to just feel its presence, is a very ambitious task. Even for just a moment, one witnesses the encounter between two forms (oneself and the outside) that simply are”. Her involvement in working on the issue of time as matter seems explicit.
Alice Benessia was born in 1973 in Turin, where she lives and works. She received a degree in Physics from the University of Turin and PhD in Science Technology and Law; she holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from the School of Visual Arts in New York (2002), and a Master’s degree in Philosophical Foundations of Physics from Columbia University in New York (2003). Alice Benessia is also a researcher on issues of the epistemology of sustainability at the Institute for Interdisciplinary Research on Sustainability (IRIS), in addition to being a founding member of the Italian Association for the Science of Sustainability. Her research on epistemological issues that arise in the context of art, science, and sustainability is interdisciplinary. In using photography, she focuses on the relationship between human beings and socio-ecological systems.
Serie Inversa hosts a cycle of informal meetings concerning the Diogene Project’s initiative of scouting the young creative scene in Piedmont, with the intention of learning about those artists who are working on or have recently begun research in the visual arts and providing them with the opportunity to come into contact with an audience outside of their usual working environment. This activity has been developed by taking on the traits of a formative path, mentoring, and support, during which – alongside the artist and his/her work – other artists and the general public may interact constructively and critically in the discussion, thus having an impact on many of the aspects regarding the sphere of production, the theoretical formation, and the positioning of artistic practice in society at this historic moment.
