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ADELAIDE CIONI
Adelaide Cioni (1976, Bologna, IT) studied drawing at UCLA, Los Angeles, text by Marta Silvi
and holds a BA in Sculpture from the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome (2015).
With an MA in contemporary history and a master’s degree in Literary
Translation, for ten years she translated American literature (John Cheever,
David Foster Wallace). In 2012 she decided to quit translating, thereby she
started her artistic practice. In 2014 she was resident for six months at Cité
internationale des arts, Paris, and won premio Celeste. In 2015 she was
resident in Villa Sträuli, Switzerland. In 2016 she moved to Umbria, and
opened with Fabio Giorgi Alberti a space/studio called “Franca.” She has
shown her work in independent spaces and institutional places, in Italy and
abroad. Adelaide Cioni’s artistic practice stems from drawing, and goes on to
assume environmental dimensions.
Her artistic journey tells of an urgency for expression which goes beyond
any locution, and dries itself in order to reach the eyes and go straight to
the memory and the heart of the viewer. While her works attract for their
apparently naïf nature, at a closer look, they betray layers of ancestral
messages. The choice of materials, often put together by assonance and tactile
properties, reveals a meticulous and patient work. The manual practice of
stitching, ancient and often erroneously noted by genre, translates itself in a
ritual which captures the viewer triggering multiple questions.
The subjects are often taken from everyday situations, both from the
physical space we inhabit and from the psychological space which is rooted in
our personal memory and becomes collective. [...] Animals, popsicles, chairs,
radiators, scotchtapes, bodyparts, stylized and enormous, gain a primordial
expressive charge which reaches the eye of the viewers unbridled and full of
strength.
Recent shows
Ab Ovo, Artefiera, Bologna, IT (2020), Shape,
color, taste, sound and smell, Adelaide Cioni/
Guy Mees, P420, Bologna, IT (2019); Tomo,
semestrale di scritti d’artista, Viaindustriae
publishing (2019); Madonna del Pozzo, Spoleto,
IT (2019) (solo); Performance with Fabio Giorgi
Alberti, Straperetana (2019); Festa Franca. A
chi ce l’ha lo dica, Cannara (PG), IT (2018); Arte
per tutti, CIAC gallery, Foligno, IT (2018); Che
fare?, Una Vetrina, The Independent Project-
MAXXI, Roma, IT (2018); Roar, Spazio Ulisse,
Chiusi, IT (2018); Pink punk performance, with
Fabio Giorgi Alberti, da Franco, Roma, IT (2018);
Riattivazione di Amleto per due voci di Ulises
Carrión, with Fabio Giorgi Alberti, Fondazione
Giuliani, Roma, IT (2018); Palio per la Quintana di
Foligno, Foligno, IT (2018); Straperetana, Pereto
(AQ), IT (2017); à propos de bacchelli, MAMbo,
Bologna (2015).
Shape, color, taste, sound and smell, installation view, 2019, P420, Bologna, IT
Ab ovo
The Ab ovo* series focuses on decorative motifs discovered during travels, * Ab ovo is a Latin expression that literally means
reading, visits to museums; motifs from prehistoric artifacts, Egyptian, Greek, “from the egg” and indicates “from the begin-
ning,” where beginning is seen as something very
Etruscan, Polynesian, Middle Eastern, Native American in origin, along with ancient, the origin of all history. In particular, the
others that are artistic expressions from more recent centuries, all the way to egg referred to is the one from which Helen of Troy
was born, the egg laid by Leda after the intercourse
the present. Some are botanical, others geometric and abstract, or celestial. with Zeus, who had taken on the guise of a swan.
Ab ovo is therefore an investigation on the recurrence of certain decorations,
from prehistory to the Renaissance to the present, and it springs to some
extent from an interest in language: these images narrate nothing, there are
no protagonists, no story, no words of reference or symbols to decipher. These
decorations are a pure attempt to fill space with a repeated sign, to tame the
material nature of the world, of objects, our everyday settings, taking them
back to a code that entirely lives on a visual level. They are codes, but they
have no meaning; for a former translator like me, this is interesting because
it hints at an aspect of the mind that is capable of abstraction, but not verbal.
An all-visual dimension where the mind simply wants to organize space, to
dress it in signs, to take possession of it, prior to any language. Since some of
these patterns – like the blocks or the stripes – are found in countless regions
of the world, in all time periods, I go so far as to think that these are visual
codes tacitly inscribed in each of us, which are universal like geometry, like
abstraction.
Decorative motifs are also interesting as an attempt to come to terms
with nature and to replicate its methods of proliferation: every pattern
contains the idea of infinity, because it can ideally be repeated forever, just as
nature multiplies itself infinitely in modules that are endowed with identical
functional characteristics, but are incarnated in individual bodies, each with
its own more or less marked variations with respect to the original canon.
There are millions of leaves on a tree, but no two of them are precisely alike.
Every incarnation has individual, unique characteristics, because becoming
body means becoming matter, and matter inevitably implies accident. Ab ovo
is therefore also an ode to diversity, a defense of the deviance of bodies.
Ab ovo. Five red circles, 2020 fabric stitched on canvas, 103 x 82 cm
Ab ovo, 2020, installation view, Arte Fiera 2020, Bologna, IT
Ab ovo. Four patterns, 2020 fabric stitched on canvas, quadriptych, 88 x 74 cm each, 176 x 156 cm overall
Detail
Ab ovo. Green palm, 2020 wool stitched on canvas, 158 x 118 cm
Detail
Ab ovo. Green leaf, 2020 wool stitched on canvas, 140 x 128 cm
Ab ovo, 2020, installation view, Arte Fiera 2020, Bologna, IT
Ab ovo. Stars, 2020 fabric stitched on canvas, 86 x 118 cm
Ab ovo. Green alga, 2020 wool stitched on canvas, 104 x 86 cm
Ab ovo. Blue stripes, 2020 wool stitched on canvas, 76 x 56 cm
Ab ovo. Bolts, 2020 fabric stitched on canvas, 134 x 42 cm
Ab ovo. Red and black triangles, 2020 wool stitched on canvas, 37 x 58 cm
Ab ovo, 2020, installation view, Arte Fiera 2020, Bologna, IT
Ab ovo. Field notes, 2020
80 drawings on slides, Kodak Carousel projection
(detail)Ab ovo. Field notes, 2020
80 drawings on slides, Kodak Carousel projection
(detail)Ab ovo. Field notes, 2020
80 drawings on slides, Kodak Carousel projection
(detail)Ab ovo. Field notes, 2020
80 drawings on slides, Kodak Carousel projection
(detail)Ab ovo. Field notes, 2020
80 drawings on slides, Kodak Carousel projection
(detail)Ab ovo. Field notes, 2020
80 drawings on slides, Kodak Carousel projection
(detail)Shape, color, taste, sound and smell, installation view, 2019, P420, Bologna, IT
Go easy on me
Shape, color, taste, sound and smell, Go Easy on Me results from the possible permutations and multiplications
installation view, 2019, P420, Bologna, IT
of color within a given form. The forms have outlines – revealing the extent
to which her practice is rooted in drawing - that are filled with solid pure
seductive color.
Flat and matte on paper, this modern color squeezed straight from the
tube summoned to fill the simple – and happy – shape of an ice cream,
surprises in the way it evokes a fresco: this pink that fills a nondescript ice
cream cone form is Giotto’s pink, Piero della Francesca’s rose. Because this
shape in front of me is so banal and featureless, I see it not as subject but
instead as vehicle, the means of color in all its seductiveness.
Thus, it becomes possible to even abstain and refrain from painting the
canvas, and therefore wield scissors in place of brush and trace a form by
snipping it out from a swathe of color and sewing it onto a support. The
qualities of the color are summed to the qualities of a finer or thicker weave, a
harder or a softer texture, and then reproduced on large scale. In this passage,
color “takes form” as material, object, as space, or better, as thing.
text by Cecilia CanzianiGo easy on me, two pink ones with red sticks, 2020
wool stitched on canvas, 142 x 150 cmSide view
Details
Go easy on me, one yellow with blue stick, 2020
wool stitched on canvas, 130 x 80 cmDetails
Secondary Images
Shape, color, taste, sound and smell, In the Secondary Images series. The subjects of the four works on the wall and
installation view, 2019, P420, Bologna, IT
the one sculpture are archetypal images that are parts of both vernacular
language (tarot cards, emblems, and coats-of-arms are all images Adelaide
Cioni investigates) and Modernist culture (the grid, repetition, sequencing).
Aby Warburg calls these occurrences Nachleben: survivals, and in the same
way as the chessboard, the waves, the column, the circle, the oval, they are
subjects that we recognize without bothering to ascribe meaning of any
kind, neither literal nor metaphoric or even figurative. These images are
even more available and familiar and less surprising than an ice cream cone,
and it is precisely because they are so recognizable and require no further
interpretation that they hit us so directly, in the same way that an icon never
describes an idea but invariably positions itself as the impossible incarnation
of an idea.
A circle can be a sun or a black hole. A chessboard is an alternation of red
and white, and the waves of the sea repeated in sequence are another possible
version. In each of these works, the choice the artist makes lies in giving a
color, giving that alone and nothing else, and in giving it one precise form and
not another. (It takes courage to state complex things simply and to declare
that all painting is an abandonment to color).
text by Cecilia CanzianiThe black holes, number 3, 2020 wool stitched on canvas, 103 x 84 cm
Detail
Il sole, 2019 wool stitched on canvas, 240 x 184 cm
La scacchiera, 2019 wool stitched on flannel, 210 x 210 cm
Shape, color, taste, sound and smell, 2019 installation view, P420, Bologna, IT
Colonna, 2019 fabric and wooden structure with mesh, 200 x 45ø cm
Il mare, 2019 wool stitched on flannel, 210 x 210 cm
Details
Scacchiera inutilizzabile rossa, 2019 Indian ink and vinyl paint on vintage paper, 28 x 22 cm
Go easy on me, one yellow, 2019 Indian ink and vinyl paint on vintage paper, 28 x 22 cm
Go easy on me, one pink, 2019 Indian ink and vinyl paint on vintage paper, 28 x 22 cm
Three yellow ones with red sticks, 2019 Indian ink and vinyl paint on vintage paper, 28 x 22 cm
270° attorno a un vaso di tulipani, frame #14, 2015 watercolour on paper, diptych, 25 x 18 cm each (25 x 36 cm overall)
270° attorno a un vaso di tulipani, frame # 22, 2015 watercolour on paper, diptych, 25 x 18 cm each (25 x 36 cm overall)
Shape, color, taste, sound and smell, 2019 installation view, P420, Bologna, IT
Adelaide Cioni was born in 1976 a Bologna, studied drawing at UCLA, 2014
Los Angeles, and holds a BA in Sculpture from the Academy of Fine Ospiti, double project room, curated by Elena Boni and Alessandro Sarra,
Arts in Rome (2015). With an MA in contemporary history and a Roma, IT
master’s degree in Literary Translation (both University of Bologna), à propos de bacchelli 5, curated by Helia Hamedani, La nube di Oort, Roma,
between 2002 and 2012 she translated American literature for Italian IT
publishers (David Foster Wallace, John Cheever, Richard Ford). In 2012 Myths, final show of the project by Mariarosa Sossai, Pastificio Cerere,
she completed the translation of John Cheever’s journals for Feltrinelli Roma, IT
and decided to quit translating, thereby she started her artistic Novembre à Vitry, Galerie municipale Jean-Collet, Vitry-sur-Seine, FR
practice. In 2014 she was resident for six months at Cité internationale Premio Celeste, Assab One, Milano, IT
des arts, Paris, and won premio Celeste. In 2015 she was resident in Biotopographies, Cité internationale des arts, Parigi, FR
Villa Sträuli, Switzerland. In 2016 she moved to Umbria, and opened You can’t go home again, curated by Helia Hamedani, La nube di Oort,
with Fabio Giorgi Alberti an independent space/studio called “Franca”. Roma, IT
She has exhibited in independent spaces and in institutional places, Open Studios, Cité internationale des arts, Parigi, FR
in Italy and abroad, among them a solo exhibition at MAMbo in Ensemble ouvert, curated by Silvy Panet-Raymond, Université Paris 8,
Bologna à propos de bacchelli 5, curated by Elisa del Prete and Home Parigi, FR
Movies in 2015.
2013
Atto abitativo #1, curated by Claudio Libero Pisano, Project Room, CIAC,
SHOWS, PROJECTS AND PERFORMANCES Genazzano, Roma, IT (solo)
ACSA 2013 final show, Autocenter Summer Academy, Berlino, DE
2020 Paesaggi a nord-ovest, curated by Ciriaco Campus, Auditorium, Roma, IT
Ab Ovo, Artefiera, Bologna, IT
2012
2019 Congresso dei disegnatori, open project started by Pawel Althamer,
Shape, color, taste, sound and smell, Adelaide Cioni/Guy Mees, doppia Istituto Svizzero, Roma, IT
personale, curated by Cecilia Canziani, P420, Bologna, IT Romance 1, curated by Tiziana Musi, Temple University, Roma, IT
Six or seven, curated by Franco Troiani, Madonna del Pozzo, Spoleto Premio Roma Centro Storico, curated by Cecilia Casorati, palazzo ex
(September), IT Monte di Pietà, Roma, IT
Tutto fuorché la luna, performance with Fabio Giorgi Alberti, curated by I ragazzi terribili, group show, Casa delle Letterature, Roma, IT
Saverio Verini, Straperetana
2018 RESIDENCIES, WORKSHOPS, PRIZES
Festa Franca. A chi ce l’ha lo dica, co-curated with Marta Silvi and Fabio
Giorgi Alberti, Cannara (PG), IT 2016
Arte per tutti, curated by Marta Silvi e Pierluigi Metelli, CIAC gallery, Costume assistant to Greta Goiris for Triumphs & Laments, William
Foligno, IT Kentridge, Roma, IT
Che fare?, curated by Giuseppe Garrera, Una Vetrina, The Independent
Project-MAXXI, Roma, IT 2015
Roar, Spazio Ulisse, Chiusi, IT Villa Sträuli, residency, Winterthur, CH
Pink punk performance, with Fabio Giorgi Alberti, curated by Vasco Workshop Performing Anthropology, with Giulia Grechi, UNIDEE,
Forconi and Andrea Polichetti, da Franco, Roma, IT Fondazione Pistoletto, Biella, IT
Riattivazione di Amleto per due voci di Ulises Carrión, with Fabio Giorgi
Alberti, for the project Psst...a Play on Gossip, curated by Adrienne 2014
Drake, Ilaria Gianni & Arnisa Zeqo, Fondazione Giuliani, Roma, IT Premio Celeste, Assab One, Milano, IT (winner for the category
Palio per la Quintana di Foligno, curated by Marta Silvi & Pierluigi “Installazione e scultura”)
Metelli, Foligno, IT Workshop with Miroslaw Balka, Varsavia, PL & Roma, IT
Premio di pittura , Novembre à Vitry, Galerie municipale Jean-Collet,
2017 Vitry-sur-Seine, (finalist), FR
Straperetana, curated by Saverio Verini, an idea by Paola Capata and Cité internationale des arts, Parigi (six-months residency, fellowship
Delfo Durante, Pereto (AQ), IT “Incontri Internazionali d’Arte”, Roma, IT)
2016 2013
Festa Franca (prima di essere qui eravamo altrove), Franca, Cannara (PG), IT ACSA, Autocenter Summer Academy, workshop with Jorinde Voigt,
16:13, Museo Macro Testaccio, Roma, IT Berlino, DE
NoPlace 3 al 49° Premio Suzzara, Suzzara (MN) , IT
Fuoriuso, curated by Giacinto di Pietrantonio and Simone Ciglia, ex 2012
tribunale, Pescara, IT Premio Roma Centro Storico, curated by Cecilia Casorati, Roma
Dehors, curated by Claudio Libero Pisano, Cisterne della cattedrale di (finalist), IT
Atri (TE), IT
Etranger, curated by Sofia Ricciardi, Pescara, IT
Disegno/Idea, curated by Francesca Gallo, AOCF58, Roma, IT ARTIST’S BOOKS
Biennale di incisione “Premio Santa Croce”, curated by Ilaria Mariotti,
villa Pacchiani, Santa Croce sull’Arno, Pisa, IT Kiosk 98, with Maria Adele del Vecchio, Editions DEL’ART, luglio 2017,
Nizza, FR
2015 Viaggio in Svizzera o dello spaesamento nel molto vicino, printed in
2.5.0. Object Is Meditation and Poetry, curated by Alba D’Urbano & Olga 2015 da Rüegger Wirz thanks to the generous support of Villa Sträuli,
Vostretsova, Grassi Museum, Lipsia, DE Winterthur, CH
Tre più due, curated by Donatella Landi, Interno 14, Roma, IT
à propos de bacchelli 5, curated by Elisa del Prete & Home Movies,
MAMbo, Museo d’Arte Moderna, Bologna, IT (solo)LECTURES AND TALK 2018 Uno, due, tre, OPLA, art lab with children from the schools of Merano, with Corraini & Archivio OPLA (archive of artists’ books for children) Contro, tre racconti americani, talk with Cesare Pietroiusti curated by Mutaimago, Teatro Biblioteca del Quarticciolo, Roma, IT 2017 Paesaggi in movimento, talk with Fabio Giorgi Alberti, Eva Marisaldi and Paolo Simoni, Archivio Aperto, MAMbo, Bologna, IT 2016 Disegno/Traduzione, talk/lecture at Accademia di Belle Arti Bologna, Lelio Aiello’s class, Bologna, IT 2015 Workshop on drawing, Tania Campisi’s class, Accademia di Belle Arti Roma, IT Nei territori selvaggi. Tradurre la libertà del testo letterario, lecture held during “Giornate della Traduzione Letteraria”, Urbino, IT Meet the artist, Villa Sträuli, Winterthur, CH SELECTED TRANSLATED BOOKS (2002-2012) John Cheever, Una specie di solitudine e I racconti, Feltrinelli Lydia Davis, Pezzo a pezzo minimumfax Almost No Memory, Varieties of Disturbance, Can’t and Won’t, BUR Richard Ford, Lo stato delle cose, Feltrinelli Rick Moody, La più lucente corona d’angeli in cielo, minimumfax The James Dean Garage Band, minimumfax David Foster Wallace, Considera l’aragosta, Einaudi US SCHOLARSHIPS DURING HIGH-SCHOOL AND UNIVERSITY 1992-93: AFS Intercultural programs, one year at Bigspring Highschool, Newville, Pennsylvania 1997-98: UCLA, one academic year, Fine arts and Native American studies
Via Azzo Gardino 9, 40122 Bologna (IT) info@p420.it / www.p420.it
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