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This evening, artist and curator Fabio Santacroce (63rd - 77th STEPS, Bari) concludes his ten-day residency at Jupiter Woods with a one-evening presentation, co-organised with curator Rosanna Puyol. This event marks the first stage of their collaboration and is conceived as a public draft, featuring sound works by Atièna and Kareem Lofty, alongside sculptural elements by Olu David Ogunnaike and Santacroce himself.
During these ten days our curatorial studio was used as a meeting space between the two curators and a number of local artists, including Atièna and Ogunnaike whose works appear in this presentation. We were interested in facilitating this preliminary stage of the project, in the process witnessing moments of alliance, as well as collision, which characterise the beginnings of curatorial ideas.
Il Cielo a Calci (intro) is a preface, as the title suggests. It implies a concept difficult to retell and thus best perceived as a poetic notion, conveying the idea of implosive rebellion against the sky as a fictional landscape. This emotive uprising invites many interpretations, yet we read it through considering Santacroce’s project space 63rd - 77thSTEPS and the conditions that outline its mode of operation.
Occupying a domestic, multi-floor staircase in Bari, Southern Italy, the project space is an excellent example of resourcefulness on the fringe. Its programme of site-specific exhibitions, as well as online and off-site projects, strains and investigates the limits and potentialities of the periphery. This challenge of working independently and with limited resources has produced a specific methodology based on spontaneity and persistence to outdo oneself.
During this ten-day process, we have witnessed the continuous negotiation of two distinct curatorial practices: on the one hand Santacroce’s vigour derived from working in a context like Bari, alongside Puyol’s experience of facilitating long-term collaborations with London-based artists and an emphasis on intimate conversation. For Jupiter Woods it has been a new experience of facilitating a curatorial process of this kind, as well as a contribution to our ongoing interest in revealing hidden or sidelined methodologies.