Bella ciao

It was not until the 16th century that potatoes arrived in Europe from South America. This (highly nutritious and abundant) vegetable literally fills the room where the artist will sit motionless for an entire day. In his installation Patate, Giuseppe Penone gives his potatoes an anthropomorphic form by forcing them to develop in moulds made from his own face. For De Novellis, the potatoes symbolise partisans who resist. The artist is thus surrounded by these activists in what looks like a living still life. This performance also reminds us of our belonging to the kingdom of life and the tuber seems to want to speak to us about the resilience of the planet Earth. At the end of the performance, the potatoes will be donated to associations and distributed to people in need.

The artist Romina De Novellis revisits major works of arte povera in an ecofeminist perspective. She proposes to reinterpret and update certain themes and motifs of arte povera, in order to rethink, in resonance with this current, the relations between genders and between all living beings. Thus, consumerism, inequalities, the weight of the past and the resistance of living beings are all palpable concerns in her performances where the body of the female artist comes into play. In doing so, Romina De Novellis imagines a series of actions in resonance with the militant attitude and the use of simple materials of arte povera.

The proof is in the title, a tribute to the Italian artist and writer Ketty La Rocca, inspired by her collage, La cultura che non vive, created in 1964. The actions of Romina De Novellis reinvest certain attitudes of arte povera, with an affirmation of the female body, in an openly ecofeminist gesture. A way to remind that arte is a feminine word in Italian.

Romina De Novellis (1982) is a performer, visual artist and researcher, born in Naples, raised in Rome and living in Paris since 2008. Trained as a dancer, she studies the body from an anthropological perspective through the prism of Mediterranean cultures.

The artist uses ecofeminist theories as a parameter to analyze and denounce the oppressive realities of our societies and the dichotomies of nature-humanity, femininity-masculinity, north-south, scientific-intuitive, power-body, establishment-counter-culture. Her intention is to highlight the reappropriation of feminine traits by women and men, in order to challenge dominant models.

Her works have been presented in many contexts, including MAC – VAL in Ivry-sur -Seine, Ca’ Pesaro International Modern and Contemporary Art in Venice, MADRE Museum in Naples, Poznan Biennial in Poland, Armory Show in New York, Villa Datris Foundation, Espace Louis Vuitton, Palais de Tokyo, Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature in Paris, among others.

In 2019, Romina De Novellis initiated an artist and researcher residency project called Domus Artist Residency, based in Galatina, Italy.

Romina De Novellis is represented by Galerie Alberta Pane – Paris/Venice.