Rossella Biscotti
Residency period
7 January – 27 March 2020
About
The cross-media practice of Rossella Biscotti (b. 1978, Italy/Belgium/Netherlands) cuts across sculpture, performance, sound works, and filmmaking. Stemming from extended research processes, conceptual excavations, personal encounters, interdisciplinary collaborations, and the subtle interrogation of sites and stories, her works encapsulate meticulous stratifications of materials and meanings. She has taken part in major international exhibitions such as Dhaka Art Summit, Bangladesh (2020); 55th Venice Biennale, Italy (2013); 13th Istanbul Biennale, Turkey (2013); dOCUMENTA 13, Kassel, Germany (2012), and Manifesta 9, Belgium (2012). Recent solo exhibitions were held at Witte de With, Rotterdam, Netherlands (2019); Kunsthaus Baselland, Muttenz, Switzerland (2018), and V–A–C Foundation, Moscow, Russia (2016). Biscotti received several awards including ACACIA Prize for Contemporary Art (2017) and Mies van der Rohe Stipendium (2013).
Focus
Sourcing oral histories and female accounts, delving into archives, and mapping sites associated with different forms of mining, exploitation, and confinement, Rossella Biscotti will deepen her research interest into colonial structures of power and management at the turn of the 20th century and the way in which these structures are interwoven with contemporary practices of production and distribution. Expanding on a recently produced body of works that explore the physical and aesthetic properties of rubber—notably its resistance and its resemblance to human skin—the artist aims to research its production process on site. She will conduct archival research on colonial trade, botanical imports, and intensive cultivations in preparation for her field trips to rubber and oil palm plantations in the region.
Public programmes
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In this talk, Rossella Biscotti interweaves thoughts and methodological considerations on some recent works that engage collective voices and female figures. She will present the research process that led to the making of Surati (2019), a work inspired by a character in Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s tetralogy Buru Quartet (1980-88) who contracts smallpox voluntarily in her efforts to escape subjection as a concubine under Dutch colonialism, and Clara (2016), a work related to the eponymous female Indian rhinoceros imported to Europe by a captain of the Dutch East India Company in the 18th century. Finally, she will touch upon I dreamt that you changed into a cat (2013), a complex audio and sculptural work created through a one-year long “oneiric laboratory” with the female inmates of Venice’s women prison during which night dreams were shared and vegetable organic waste was turned into a compost installation.
BIOGRAPHY
The cross-media practice of Rossella Biscotti (b. 1978, Italy/Belgium/Netherlands) cuts across sculpture, performance, sound works, and filmmaking. Stemming from extended research processes, conceptual excavations, personal encounters, interdisciplinary collaborations, and the subtle interrogation of sites and stories, her works encapsulate meticulous stratifications of materials and meanings. She has taken part in major international exhibitions such as Dhaka Art Summit, Bangladesh (2020); 55th Venice Biennale, Italy (2013); 13th Istanbul Biennale, Turkey (2013); dOCUMENTA 13, Kassel, Germany (2012), and Manifesta 9, Belgium (2012). Recent solo exhibitions were held at Witte de With, Rotterdam, Netherlands (2019); Kunsthaus Baselland, Muttenz, Switzerland (2018), and V–A–C Foundation, Moscow, Russia (2016). Biscotti received several awards including ACACIA Prize for Contemporary Art (2017) and Mies van der Rohe Stipendium (2013).
Image: Rosella Biscotti, Surati, 2019, natural rubber, detail. Rossella Biscotti, new work (2019), Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam. Photo by Kristien Daem. Courtesy the artist.