On the occasion of the 22th Giornata del Contemporaneo, promoted by AMACI, on Saturday 10 October Lottozero will open its Kunsthalle to the public for a special opening from 11 am to 1 pm, offering visitors the opportunity to see “patron/ise”, the final exhibition of the first residency cycle of Textile Art Factory.
At 12 pm, Alessandra Tempesti, curator of Lottozero Kunsthalle, will lead a guided tour of the exhibition, offering an opportunity to explore its themes and gain a closer understanding of the research and processes that led to the creation of the works.
Curated by Ester Maria d’Avossa, curator-in-residence, patron/ise presents works by Lorena Bucur, Carmen Buonanno, Linda Ann Cipriani and Nikola Filipović, developed over the course of a six-month residency in Prato.
The exhibition reflects on the conditions that make artistic production possible and on the forms of labour, negotiation and compromise that often remain hidden behind the finished work.
Taking the artist residency as its point of departure, patron/ise challenges the idea of a creative space removed from the pressures of everyday life, approaching it instead as part of the economic, institutional and social structures that shape the broader art system.
The dialogue with Prato’s textile context brings to the fore a parallel between artistic and textile production: both are the result of a succession of processes, skills, relationships and forms of labour that tend to disappear into the finished object. Research, technical learning, experimentation, conversations, physical effort and adaptation all precede what ultimately becomes visible. Textile thus becomes not simply a medium, but a way of thinking through labour and the conditions of artistic production. The works interweave material and digital processes, memory and migration, childhood and heritage, protest and care, bringing to the fore the gestures, relationships and processes involved in the making of the work.
patron/ise concludes the first cycle of Textile Art Factory, a project promoted and coordinated by Lottozero in partnership with the Museo del Tessuto di Prato and Studio Corte 17, and supported by the Tuscany Regional Programme ESF+ 2021–2027. Through two cycles of training residencies, the project brings contemporary art into dialogue with textile practices, connecting the research of a new generation of creative practitioners with the manufacturing and cultural heritage of Prato’s textile district.
