Project Rooms 2019

The Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro opens 2019 with the inauguration of a new cycle of Project Rooms on 13 March entrusted to the guest curator Cloé Perrone.
Continuing with the renewal path that began in 2016, the Foundation’s Scientific Board– comprising Lorenzo Respi (Head of Production of the FMAV – Fondazione Modena Arti Visive), Andrea Viliani (General Director of the Donnaregina Foundation for contemporary art / MADRE – Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Donnaregina, Naples) and Luca Massimo Barbero (Director of the Institute of Art History of the Giorgio Cini Foundation and Associate Curator of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice) who joined in January 2019 with a three-year mandate – has appointed a guest curator entrusted with the task of identifying three significant figures in the contemporary art scene, to whom commission a project designed to involve the whole exhibition space. The Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro is proud to be a lively observatory of the contemporary art scene, paying particular attention to artists under 40 who take a pioneering approach to investigating sculpture as artistic practice and linguistic discipline.

Project Room #10. Sophia Al-Maria. Mirror Cookie is thus the first appointment for the 2019 Project Room cycle curated by Cloé Perrone, which this year offers three solo exhibitions by young international artists: Sophia Al-Maria, Caroline Mesquita and Rebecca Ackroyd. These three protagonists chosen by Cloé Perrone are all artists who use sculpture within a multidisciplinary practice, expanding the definition itself. In their work sculpture, not seen as a result but as a process, becomes an instrument used to build environments where the visitor is forced to interact with projects that deal with socio-cultural phenomena like misogyny, the apocalypse and national identity.

From 14 March to 31 May 2019 the Qatari-American artist Sophia Al-Maria will bring Mirror Cookie to the Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro, an installation comprising a video – co-produced by Project Native Informant, London and Anna Lena Films – played on a screen placed on a boudoir, within a room surrounded by mirrors.
A fan of Bai Ling\’s blog since the early 2000s, Al-Maria was curious about a recurring motif in Bai’s posts referencing ‘cookie’. For a long time Sophia assumed that this ‘cookie’ was a person, perhaps a secret lover. But in fact Bai was writing positive, loving self-affirmations.
The installation Mirror Cookie (2018) takes a collection of Bai’s ‘cookies’ and organizes them into a disjointed monologue referencing the self-help practice of ‘mirror work’. This slowly becomes an impassioned improvisation delivered directly to camera, as if the fourth wall she is breaking is a reflection.