Beatrice Catanzaro
Born1975 (age 48–49)
Known forVisual Arts

Beatrice Catanzaro (born 1975, Milan) is a socially engage artist, researcher and teacher. Her practice questions social hegemonic structures through collective imaginary processes, grounded in long term engagements and inter-disciplinary collaborations. She has been working throughout Europe, the Middle East, and India.

Life and work

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Education

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Beatrice Catanzaro is currently a doctoral candidate at the Oxford Brookes University with the Social Sculpture Research Unit (2014 - )[1]. Between 2007 and 2008, she completed the independent study course in Visual Arts and critical studies at the Maumaus - Escola de Artes Visuais, Lisboa, Portugal. She attended the MFA in Public Art and New Artistic Strategies at the Bauhaus University of Weimar, Germany (2002-2004). She holds a BA in painting from the Brera Art Academy of Milan (1999), where she graduated with a dissertation in Art Therapy.


Artwork

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Beatrice Catanzaro is an Italian/Swedish artist who is known for her long term socially engaged art practice. Her work creates the conditions for shared learning and public participation, and have been produced and exhibited throughout Europe, the Middle East, and India. Catanzaro's practice lies on the threshold between art and social and cultural activism, she has been collaborating with art institutions, as well as initiated independent projects, beyond the realm of the art system. Her research and socially engaged art practice, declines in various forms, from setting up social enterprises and community based initiatives to public installations, photography and video. Her research focal germinates from a careful understanding of the epistemology of the local, and often is developes through inter-disciplinary collaborations. Between 2010 and 2015, Catanzaro lived between Jerusalem and Nablus (Palestine), where she initiated Bait al Karama, a social enterprise and women community center in the Old City of Nablus. She thought classes in research practices and socially engaged art at the International Art Academy of Palestine, in Ramallah.


Selected works

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Gayle Chong Kwan, The Pan Hag Field Kitchen, 2016

You Are But You Are Not, (2016-17) An audio-guide on the theme of borders and hospitality for the city of Bolzano. Curated by Lungomare (Bolzano - Italy).[2] YOU ARE BUT YOU ARE NOT is an audio-guide on the theme of borders and hospitality. The guide is trilingual, in three chapters, and is conceived as a permanent audio track for the city of Bolzano. YOU ARE BUT YOU ARE NOT is a project by the geographer Kolar Aparna and the artist Beatrice Catanzaro and is curated and produced by Lungomare in the context of their long-term residency 2016-2017. The script of the audio-guide is written by Elena Pugliese. YOU ARE BUT YOU ARE NOT interconnects research on migration with cultural production, moves between reality and fiction, and is the result of participative research and work practices with the civil society, activists, researchers, representatives of NGOs and refugees from the area around Bolzano. The audio-guide follows a given route in the public space of the city of Bolzano. It starts at Bolzano train station and moves along the “margins” of the city, passing through the area of the train station to the Rosegger Park, opposite the central police station. The listener is guided by a narrating voice, which interlaces facts with metaphors, and reflects on the shifting of boundaries and the emergence of biographies, as well as on the conditions of hosting and becoming refugee in Europe. YOU ARE BUT YOU ARE NOT aims to offer a reflective journey into "our" procedures of hospitality in Europe.[3]


Fatima’s Chronicles (2016) Presented at the Quadriennale, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, (Roma - Italy), Section curated by Matteo Lucchetti.[4] Video Installation inspired by the experience of Bait Al Karama, an association run by women for women in the Old City of Nablus, Palestine. The organization, co-founded by the artist, is here evoked in a video that depicts Fatima Kaddumy's (co-funder of Bait al Karama) hands, mimicking the preparation of food as a gesture of hospitality. In contrast with these images, two overhead projectors screen stories of asylum seekers and migrants encountered in Bolzano as part of another research, interwoven here with the reference to the Tessere Hospitalis, the documents used in ancient Rome to regulate access and ensure hospitality for foreigners (Matteo Lucchetti??).[5]


 
Gayle Chong Kwan, 'Wastescape', 2012

Bait al Karama (2010-ongoing), Women Comunity Centre and Social Enterprise co-founded with Fatima Kaddumy, Cristiana Bottigella and the Nablus Old City Charity (Nablus - Palestine). Bait al Karama is a social enterprise, home to the foremost Palestinian cooking-school run entirely by women in the Old City of Nablus[6]. With the income generated through the school, the restaurant and culinary tours, the centre organises educational trainings and programmes for women and children in the community. Bait al Karama became a Slow Food Convivium in 2012[7]. Since early stages, food was understood as a strategy for aggregation, cultural mediation and income generation. Palestinian women are beholder of gestures and tastes of the local culinary cultural heritage – a heritage that is quickly disappearing under the economical pressure of the occupation.[8] In 2015 the project was presented at the European Parlament in Brussel.[9]

A needle in the binding(2011), Installation commissioned and curated by the Jerusalem Show and the Al Ma’mal Foundation (Jerusalem).[10] The prisoner’s book section of the Nablus Municipality Library hosts approximately 8000 books read by Palestinian political prisoners between 1967 and 1995. The project consists in putting on display, over a period of 3 weeks, circa 200 books from the Prisoner’s Section and make them available to the general public at the Khalidi Library in the Old City of Jerusalem.  The books have been selected in collaboration with Palestinian ex-political prisoners and smuggled across the Segregation Wall separating Jerusalem from the West Bank. A series of open talks accompanied the exhibition, in order to unfold the central role of books and self-organized education systems among Palestinian prisoners. The talks was curated and moderated by Professor Esmail Nashif.Professor Esmail Nashif A needle in the binding was part of the third edition of The Cities Exhibition[11], produced by the Birzeit University Museum, "Between Ebal and Gerzim" curated by Vera Tamari and Yazid Anani (2011). Also exhibited at the CIC in Cairo[12] and at the CCA in Glasgow (https://www.cca-glasgow.com/programme/the-house-that-heals-the-soul), (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centre_for_Contemporary_Arts)

The Water Was Boiling at 34° 21' 29“ South, 18° 28' 19” East (2008), Installation curated by Achille Bonito Oliva at the MART Museum of Rovereto (Italy).[13] Departing from the investigation on the use of visual representation during the dictatorship in Portugal (1932 –1974), Beatrice Catanzaro took as study case the Exposiçao do Mundo Portugues (Exposition of the Portuguese World) held in Lisbon in 1940, involving Portugal and its colonies (provìncias ultramarine) in a majestic propagandistic display in the area of Belem along the Tejo river in Lisbon. Several pavilions and monuments, erected in this occasion, are still in place today, functioning now as tourists’ sites. Among those, the Padrão dos Descobrimentos(Monument to the Discoveries), erected in wood and plaster for the Ex-position of the Portuguese World and rebuild permanently in concrete and stone twenty years later in 1960, still under the Salazarian regime, in the honor of the 500th anniversary of the death of Prince Henry the Navigator. The Water Was Boiling at 34° 21' 29“ South, 18° 28' 19” East, generates a new narrative around the Monument to the Discoveries through the magic sorcery of the magician P.C. Sorcar JR and the possibility of making the monument disappear.[14]

Scaffold (2009) curated by the Contemporary Art Association Nosadella.Due (Bologna - Italia). Intrigued by the construction techniques employed in the building of Bologna’s medieval towers, whit Scaffolder, Beatrice Catanzaro reminds us of current practices that are not so different from those of that distant period to which the towers of Bologna belong. In countries like China and India (and, indeed, in many others) bamboo has traditionally been used for the construction of scaffolding. During the middle ages, timber was used in the same way for building the lofty structures which today characterize the city of Bologna and in which traces of the holes on the exterior walls are still visible. The enormous flexibility and strength of bamboo, as well as its rapid growth, make this material ideal in unusual construction sites, notably for high buildings, such as skyscrapers. Accordingly, the artist has decided to draw a parallel between two very different cultures as a means to reawaken the public’s interest about urban areas which usually attract little attention. By means of an act of displacement, and replacement by an ‘alien’ structure, this artist induces us to reflect on the tower as it appears today, displaying those architectural features which we rarely think about but which testify to its past. At the same time we are asked to reflect on a building technique which, whether or not we are familiar with it, is undoubtedly different from that customarily used in Europe. Beatrice Catanzaro recreates a ‘hypothetical’ scaffolding on the facade of the Alberici Tower https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Towers_of_Bologna, seemingly reproducing an old method which, at the same time, speaks to us about the present, transporting us to other places and contexts (Nosadella Due http://www.nosadelladue.com/n2back/archivio_showArtisti_eng.asp?id=46)

Ext links:

https://vimeo.com/6932859 http://ricerca.repubblica.it/repubblica/archivio/repubblica/2009/07/03/le-torri-contemporanee.html




 
Gayle Chong Kwan, The Obsidian Isle, 2011


 
Gayle Chong Kwan, Core, Journey to the Centre of the Earth, 2007–9

Residencies & Awards

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  • 2017 School for Public Engagement curated by Simone Frangi at Viafarini, Milan (Italy).[15]
  • 2016/17 Artist in Residence at the Art Association Lungomare, Bolzano (Italy).[16]
  • 2016 Cohabitation Artist in Residency program in Nicosia (Cyprus), curated by Viviana Checchia.
  • 2015 Artist in Residence at the Al-Mamal Foundation, Old City Jerusalem (Palestine).[17]
  • 2013 Shortlisted for the Visible Award for socially engaged artistic practices.[18]
  • 2011 Honorary mention for the CDA-project grant for artistic research and production.
  • 2011 Roberto Cimetta Fund for artist mobility.
  • 2010 Land Art Mongolia.
  • 2010 Artist in Residence at the Qattan Foundation, Ramallah (Palestine).
  • 2010 Mobility Grant Residenzaitalia.
  • 2010 Artist in Residence at Le Ville Matte, curated by Chiara Agnello, Sardegna (Italy).
  • 2009 Selected for the International Contemporary Art Price Diputació de Castelló, EACC – Spazio d´Arte Contemporanea di Castelló (Spain).
  • 2009 Artist in Residence at Decolonizing Architecture Beit Sahour (Palestine).
  • 2008 Artist in Residence at Reloading images Damascus, Damascus (Syria).
  • 2007 Artist in Residence at the Fundaçao Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon (Portugal).
  • 2005 Movin´Up award for artist mobility by the GAI (Young Italian Artists Association).
  • 2005 Masai Art Factory Award first prize (Italy).
  • 2004 Artist in Residence at UNIDEE, Cittadellarte – Pistoletto Foundation, Biella (Italy).
  • 2003 Artist in Residence at Ratti Foundation curated by Angela Vettese and Giacinto di Pietrantonio, visiting professor Richard Nonans, Como (Italy).

Teaching and education work

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Beatrice Catanzaro is a visiting tutor and lecturer invited to speak on her art practice and to run tutorials at art colleges and Universities internationally. Including: Lecture at the School for Civic Imagination curated by Viviana Checchia at CCA – Glasgow (UK)(2017); Workshop Questioning Hegemonic Hospitality. A reflective exploration at the École Supérieure d’Art et Design of Grenoble (France)(2017); Workshop A Curriculum Vita- a perspective from EGO achievements to We process at the Akademie der ZUsammenKUNFT, Berlin (Germany)(2016); Visiting artist at the module Art and Hilling at the Art Academy of Brera, Milano (Italy)(2016); Teacher in Research Practice and Socially Engaged Practice at the International Art Academy Palestine, Ramallah (Palestine)(2012-15); Lecture at the Röda Sten Konsthall in Göteborg curated by BOX AFTERWORK (Sweden)(2015); Jury member at the 3rd edition of the Visible Award 2015 in Liverpool (UK) (2015); Visiting artist at the artist residency program Unidee – Cittadellarte Fondazione Pistoletto, Bilella (Italy)(2015); Speaker at the Creative Time Summit “Curriculum” at the Venice Biennial, Venice (Italy)(2015)[19]; Visiting Artist at the Osservatorio di Arte Pubblica, Politecnico University of Milan (Italy)(2014); Speaker at close door symposium Considering Impact of Socially Engaged Urban Art Projects organized by the New York University Florence and Creative Time NY, Firenze (Italy)(2010); Visiting Artist at Campus in Camps, Dheisheh refugee camp, Bethlehem (Palestine)(2012); Speaker at the public talk Parola d’ Artista curated by Milovan Farronato at the Contemporary Art Festival of Faenza (Italy)(2011); Visiting Artist at the International Artists in Residence Program UNIDEE, Cittadellarte – Pistoletto Foundation, Biella (Italy)(2015-2010); Speaker at the seminar in visual culture See-Saw: Context of Spectatorship at the University of Hyderabad (India)(2010); Workshop Methods and strategies for Public Art interventions curated by the Neon Gallery for the GAP program (Public Art and emerging artists), Bologna (Italy)(2008); Lecture on Strategies of inclusion in the field of Public Art at the Srishti School of Art, Bangalore (India)(2008); Elective course on Creative strategies for cultural participation: radio as public space at the CEPT University for Architecture, Urban Planning and Interior Design, Ahmedabad (India)(2007); Visiting Artist at the CEPT University for Architecture, Urban Planning and Interior Design, Ahmedabad (India)(2006); Teacher assistant at the module Art and hilling at the Art and Humanities Department,Oxford Brookes University, Oxford (UK)(2004); Coordinator of the Art Therapy project Living the community at the Psychiatric Community of Musso and the Art Therapy Atelier of Dongo, Como (Italy)(1999-00).

Personal life

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Beatrice Catanzaro was born in Milan to an Italian father and a Swedish mother. She lives with her daughter Yasmin (born in 2014) in Milan.

References

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Further readings

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About You Are But You Are Not

About Bait al Karama

About A Needle in the Binding

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Category:1975 births Category:Italian artists Category:Italian contemporary artists