On the occasion of the 19th Giornata del Contemporaneo, the major event promoted by AMACI – Association of Italian Contemporary Art Museums and realized with the support of the General Directorate of Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture, in collaboration with the General Directorate for Public and Cultural Diplomacy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, the Italian Cultural Institute of Madrid (IIC) presents MI PRENDO CURA DI ME (I Take Care of Myself).

The exhibition, curated by Recontemporary, showcases the video works of five Italian artists – Francesca Lolli, Rä di Martino, Mara Palena, Lorenzo Peluffo, and Fortuna De Nardo with Enrico Turletti and Eugenio Nicolella, as well as a sculpture by Aurora Paolillo.

The common thread of the 19th Day of Contemporary Art is sustainability as a nature to be nurtured, of which taking care of oneself is the first step in taking care of the environment: during the experience, the viewer is invited to explore themselves and the space through the enjoyment of five works + 1 that, in addition to delving into the theme from different perspectives, differ from each other in the language used.

The intimate sphere opens up to the collective in Mara Palena’s work, with the construction of immersive scenarios that empathetically welcome the viewer into a potentially infinite mnemonic archive: a study of trauma and its consequences on behavior and memory. The artist exposes the most intimate psychic mechanisms of her unconscious that emerged during EMDR therapy, not omitting the traumatic events experienced, in order to guide the viewer through a journey that retraces all the emotional stages.

In Aride, Megan Stancanelli, through a few emotionally charged and high-quality cinematic frames, is capable of showing us in less than a minute how the Earth is nothing but a reflection of our body and how we take care of it or fail to do so.

Francesca Lolli’s RiGenerazione portrays Earth as a form of healing. The suggestion is that of a great Mother, a Goddess of the Earth, agriculture, and fertility, who heals the wounds of her children with her embrace. She doesn’t erase them but makes them fertile, ready to receive new life.

The audience is then immersed in a sensitive space: Lorenzo Peluffo and Fortuna De Nardo, in line with their artistic practice, transform the environment, creating a Sound Garden (Giardino Sonoro) within the Belvedere room, a site-specific installation created in collaboration with Enrico Turletti and Eugenio Nicolella. It’s an audible transcription of the emotional intelligence of plants, perceptible to the human ear. The result is an empathetic garden where humanity and plants find contact and awareness of each other.

Digital and reality converge in Rä di Martino’s L’Eccezione, a bust of a beheaded statue in a desperate search for self-awareness. Slight movements in a continuous and unreal dance where the body is nothing more than a metaphor for the environment that, despite being mutilated, persists in its natural cycle.

To conclude, Now you can touch me with care, a work by Aurora Paolillo, confronts us with the fragility of the body and spirit through a delicate suspended sculpture, in memory of its creator, who recently passed away.