Artist background and video introductions
Paola Anziché (Italy)

Introduction

I studied at the Fine Arts Academy in Milan and at the Städelschule, Staatliche Hochschule Für Bildende Künste in Frankfurt am Main in Germany.
I have chosen to select some of my works to show you that my artistic practices are wide and that in my research I investigate the ability of art to show certain things. This is because in my artistic education and in my personal artistic evolution, I have come to value the idea as the most important aspect. So I will use any medium possible to express these ideas.
I also take on a wide spectrum of topics: different cultural contexts such as bio-architecture, popular beliefs, ancient rituals, and the most advanced sciences. The short videos will also give you an idea about how my artwork has evolved and help you to understand my Baku works better.

About the show in Baku.

The title of the exhibition describes the approach I have used in Baku: looking for local fibres, including wool, closely linked to the cultural origins and identity of Azerbaijan. As my ideas developed and evolved during my time here, so too these aerial sculptures took shape in my imagination and then in reality. ‘The Fibres of Baku’ is an exploratory portrait that honours my personal cultural experience and the people I have met in this town.

Video 1: ‘Tapis-à-porter’ (2009)

It was show at Careof Milano, a non-profit organisation for the promotion of contemporary artistic research.

This video documents the preparatory stages of a performance involving carpet sculptures. They are turned into a sort of garment and are ‘worn’ by performers. I use the video recording to study movements and set them in definite perspectival frames, thus building specific relationships between the body and the objects.

The idea of metamorphosis is also central to the carpet-work series. The very fabric they are made of, the traditional pezzotti, carpet scraps woven together from rags, evokes an idea of fleetingness. I create my tapis, or carpets, by sewing together a certain number of pezzotti, like imaginary territories.


Video 2: ‘Choreografica Madras’ (2010-2012)

This video was made during my residency program at the pact Zollverein in Essen, an international venue for contemporary arts and theatre.

The video, inspired by the tradition of illusionism, works with one dancer and one acrobat. The textile in the curtain is Madras, the name of the fabric which originates from the city of Madras in India where it was created. It is also and is related to Tartan the pattern in Scottish fabrics.

Video 3: ‘Spaziando’ (2010)

This was a work produced for my show by the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin.

In this video you see a dancer moving in the work. I asked a ballet dancer to move freely inside and with a soft net.
The artwork has grid-like structure that clings to the museum’s architectural space, intersects and alters it, thus confronting visitors with a new relationship with the space, an intense physical interaction with the work.