Muse
by Elena Mazzi, Italy 2020, 13'
SUBJECT AND SHOOTING: Elena Mazzi   TEXT: Enrica Camporesi, Elena Mazzi
VOICE OVER: Sara Lazzaro   SOUND: Nicola di Croce
PRODUCER: In Between Art Film   EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: Paola Ugolini
EDITING: Daniele Alef Grillo, Elena Mazzi   LANGUAGE: vo: English; sub: Italian

Schermo dell'Arte - Archivio Film  Presented at Lo schermo dell’arte 2020 
 
As part of the project 
Mascarilla 19 – Codes of Domestic Violence
First project by the Fondazione In Between Art Film, that includes 8 artists’ shorts on the subject of domestic violence, how it has increased due to the pandemic and the resulting social containment measures.

In the video Muse, the artist leads viewers into the nightmare of gender violence through the disorienting beauty of the Greek and Roman statues in the Antiquarium of Palazzo Grimani in Venice. The camera shows close-ups of the bodies and faces of these women and men from antiquity; bodies that have been restored, put back together, with breaks and mends in the marble; details of broken fingers; a series of legs and bodies. The voiceover tells stories of rape, of abduction, following a text that has been constructed by selecting myths in which violence plays a pivotal role, putting them into a broader narrative that ties this mythological past to the present and highlights how certain behavioral dynamics are still the same today.

Elena Mazzi (Reggio Emilia 1984, lives and works between Turin and Venice). Her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions, including: Centro Pecci per l’arte contemporanea (2020), Museo Novecento Firenze (2020), Whitechapel Gallery London (2018), GAMeC Bergamo (2018). As part of the Lo schermo dell’arte she participated in 2016 in the 5th edition of VISIO European Program on Artists’ Moving Images exhibiting in the VISIO Outside the Black Box exhibition.

Selected Filmography:
Performing the Self - The Interview, 2017; I Am Talking To You, 2017; A Fragmented World, 2016.
 

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