Irene Fenara Selected Portfolio

Irene Fenara
Selected Portfolio

The interest in theories of Visual Culture and the need to appropriate the
instruments of contemporaneity, which determine our way of seeing,
become for Irene Fenara the starting point to practice reflection on images.
Reflection on the linguistic devices and use of optical and electronic in-
struments of various kinds, from Polaroid to surveillance cameras, often in
an improper manner and trasgressing their basic function, becomes an in-
strument for observing the world, in the search for a slight poetic sense.
The act of vision is the central element of her work that declines in her
latest research on optical devices, often used as instruments of control,
bringing attention to the always reversibile overturning between who ob-
serves and who is observed. Interested in different expressive media, len-
ding particular attention to video and photography, she creates installa-
tions working with images that overturn the points of view and generate
spatial disorientation. Orientation in the physical space, relations of proxi-
mity and distance and the resulting need of movement often generates
vertical perspectives that lead the mind’s gaze upward, towards the sky.

self portrait from surveillance camera
2018 - in progress | photos from surveillance camera
150x200 cm, 55x75,9 cm, 36x47 cm, 13,2x17,6 cm

Irene Fenara relates power and vision using an instrument that
is usually extraneous to art: surveillance cameras that acquire
images for the sole purpose of environmental control. The work
bears the traces of a movement, that of the artist who goes from
the studio to the surveillance camera and then saves the image
that portrays her before the continuous flow cancels it 24 hours
later. The artist's gaze, turned towards the objective, becomes
an act of resistance to impose her identity on the controlled
world. It is a reversed point of view that, however, makes us
reflect on the always reversible relationship between the obser-
ver and who is observed.
               > installation view That's IT! Sull'ultima generazione di artisti in Italia e a un metro e ottanta dal confine
                                                                       MAMbo - Museo d'Arte Moderna di Bologna 2018

Supervision

2018 | installation | photos from surveillance camera

With Supervision Irene Fenara presents a selection of images
from surveillance cameras saved from the continuous flow that
erases them every 24 hours, underlining the contrast between a
highly functional activity and an equally powerful aesthetic. The
aesthetics of surveillance, supervision and control are realized
thanks to the devices that frame the amplified vision. In this
imaginary, seductive and dystopian at the same time, forms of
vegetable or animal life interact with the machine. The visions,
like oxymorons frozen in photographs of warm and acidic
colors, introduce a space, apparently without human beings, in
which the development of technology is related to the growth of
one's potentiality through the web. The relationship between
observer and observed is marked by the entry into a world of
post-privacy through the use and dissemination of protected
data, extrapolated from the context of origin. The sharing of pro-
tected data, extracted through a hack, in a space in which many
are observing few, makes the user involved, and therefore com-
plicit, with a process of normalization of surveillance.
                        > installation view Supervision BACO Base Arte Contemporanea Odierna Bergamo 2018

Who Needs Eyes When You Have Sapphire Crystal Lenses?
2018 | artist's book | 168 pages cm.19x15

Who Needs Eyes When You Have Sapphire Crystal Lenses? is a
collection of images from surveillance cameras and saved from
the continuous stream that deletes them every 24 hours. The
book presents a disturbing and dystopian imaginary of a world
apparently without human beings, focused on the development
of technology in relation to the growth of its potentiality through
the web. One of the main problems of the so-called Internet of
Things is the always reversible relationship between who ob-
serves and who is observed, because the devices we believe to
use are actually able to use us and our data, making us all invol-
ved, in a certain sense, in surveillance.

MEGAGALATTICO
2017 | four-channel projection video installation | environment size

What is the relationship between sky and electronic devices?
What happens if the light of distant stars becomes close, pas-
sable, crushed by the shooting of a video camera and reprodu-
ced on monitors or projections and if the sky as a place of aspi-
rations becomes physical and closes itself in a room?
Irene Fenara produces four short videos from recordings made
by video surveillance cameras. The sequences are subtracted
by the artist as a result of a peaceful intrusion via internet in clo-
sed-circuit networks; the short clips thus obtained are
projected in loop in the walls of the exhibition place, the obser-
ver is immersed in a simulative environment, a cosmic and dila-
ted dimension, in which an aesthetic value is created starting
from shooting with other primary function. In one of the sequen-
ces we are left to guess, for a few seconds, what the origin of
the signal is, triggering a relationship of exchange in the two
senses in which the observer is not only observed, but he also
take a position of disorienting infiltrated.
                                 > installation view Family Matters Gelateria Sogni di Ghiaccio Bologna 2017

Struggle for Life

2016 | video | 19’52’’ https://vimeo.com/162763955

The video focuses on the impossibility of keeping the gaze fixed
at the sky by a surveillance camera, which, carrying out its task
as a controller, always returns the automated look downwards,
towards what must be observed. The possibility to control the
camera from a computer at a great distance allows who is lo-
oking to wander his look and get lost for very short moments in
the passage of clouds in the sky, but then immediately it returns
to the rigid architecture of a Danish farm. Machine movements
allow you to look in any direction, the machine allows you to
look upwards, but does not allow contemplation. The impossibi-
lity of keeping our eyes fixed on the sky reflects the difficulty of
keeping great dreams alive and continuing to believe in them.
The upward movement is a tendency, the upward force is the
need to dream and look upwards to continue to raise our heads
despite the constraints. Vertical displacement from bottom to
top and vice versa is the tension that moves between big
dreams and everyday reality.
                        > installation view Supervision BACO Base Arte Contemporanea Odierna Bergamo 2018

21st Century Bird Watching
2016 | screenshots | 20 digital prints on laminate and plexiglass
cm.100x140 (cm.16x25 each)

21st Century Bird Watching is a collection of images from video
streaming of a surveillance camera that captures another sur-
veillance camera. The images, all from the same point of view
and with the same frame, talk about the temporal dimension of
a portion of sky in which a technological device intrudes stron-
gly along the diagonal. The cctv camera's pole soon becomes,
however, a perch on which stand a variety of volatile species.
The experience of birdwatching thus becomes mediated by a
stratification of visual technologies and levels of reading, star-
ting from the observation of the sky and of what is hidden there.
Central is also the act of vision. Looking is the main activity of
all the subjects involved: the birds, the cameras and the obser-
ver. The eagle, like the camera, observes but is also observed,
highlighting the bivalent character of an optical device, often
used as a control tool.
                                    > installation view Essere politico Fondazione Fotografia Modena 2017

le interne differenze
2017 | installation | film on glass and 4 photographs on plexiglass
environment size

The exhibition talks about the distance like inner appropriation
of a certain time and place. It is a house that comes from the
past and that looks for an open space in which to remain far. In-
terior views are the main subject of large format photographs
that fit into an environmental installation. The space of distance,
so recomposed, calls to inner visibility, and photography takes
up an extreme task: to bring the visible towards the breaking of
the limit. It still suggests that making the thresholds transparent
is to rediscover, at least in the duration of its appearance, that
which is lost, or hidden, or closed in the irreversibility of time,
covered by its dust.

with a text by Antonio Prete
         > installation view le interne differenze P420 Bologna 2017 photo credit Carlo Favero, courtesy the artist and P420

se il cielo fugge
2016 | video installation site-specific | environment size
https://vimeo.com/172879719

Fragmentation of the external world and nature enter in the
exhibition space, deconstructing the visual and spatial percep-
tion of the spectators. Everything becomes the opposite of
everything: the distant comes near and the neighbor moves
away; the below becomes the above and the above the below;
the sky is land or sea; the rooms in the rooms turn and then
return to the floor in a new horizontal perspective built by the
artist through images and videos that establish a reversed dia-
logue between themselves and with the beholder. The coordina-
tes of the represented geographers and those of the same
space are confused and the points of reference are questioned
in such a way as to create a sensation of tactile vertigo. The
artist then overturns this vision by giving her own, while que-
stioning the very idea of the representation of the world: what is
really reversed, the structure, the photographs and the videos
or ourselves we are looking at?
                                            > installation view Se il cielo fugge Adiacenze Bologna 2016

mentre la terra compie i suoi giri attorno al sole

2015 | video installation site-specific | environment size

https://vimeo.com/131314457
https://vimeo.com/131314329
https://vimeo.com/142265040

While the earth orbits around the sun, everything else happens.
In any part of the globe, wherever you are, whatever you’re
doing, the world imperceptibly and inexorably moves. A camera
and a pendulum make visual architectures distort themselves
and enter an undulating loop, revealing the dynamism of the
static, and the staticity of what is dynamic, making visible an ap-
parent immobility. This installation tries to show fragments of
our universe breaking it down into small particles, in the belief
that all large things are not understandable in their entirely, but
only if torn apart.
                                           > installation view E lo fecero a pezzi Adiacenze Bologna 2015

IRENE FENARA Bologna IT, 1990
                                                                                                        Give me yesterday
                                                                                                        curated by Francesco Zanot, Fondazione Prada Osservatorio, Milano 2016

EDUCATION                                                                                               /DGLVIDWWDGHOO·LPPDJLQH
                                                                                                        curated by Carlo Sala, Cà dei Ricchi, Treviso 2016
Academy of Fine Arts Bologna
Master in Visual Arts 2015-2017                                                                         Città che si vedono
Bachelor in Sculpture 2011-2014                                                                         curated by Giorgia Gastaldon, Palinsesti, San Vito al Tagliamento, Pordenone 2015

                                                                                                        Un certo sguardo
                                                                                                        curated by Davide Tranchina, Spazio Labò, Bologna 2015
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Academy of Fine Arts Bologna
teaching assistant in the Department of Visual Arts and Painting 2018                                   SCREENINGS

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                                                                                                        MAXXI Roma 2018
SOLO SHOW
                                                                                                        Blue Gold
Blinds and other Cloudings                                                                              IkonoTV 2017
curated by UNA, Spazio Leonardo Milano 2018

Supervision
curated by Mauro Zanchi and Sara Benaglia, BACO Bergamo 2018                                            COLLECTION

Le interne differenze                                                                                   'POEB[JPOF'PUPHSBmB'POEB[JPOF$BTTBEJ3JTQBSNJP .PEFOB
P420, Bologna 2017                                                                                      BACO Base Arte Contemporanea Odierna, Bergamo
                                                                                                        Allianz Bank, Bologna
MEGAGALATTICO                                                                                           Musei Civici, Monza
Gelateria Sogni di Ghiaccio, Bologna 2017

Se il cielo fugge
Adiacenze, Bologna 2016                                                                                 RESIDENCIES | PRIZES

                                                                                                        The Blank Residency
                                                                                                        Bergamo 2017
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITION
                                                                                                        Biennale Giovani Monza
AROUND ME Traces of presence in biopolscapes                                                            Monza 2017 (winner)
curated by Carlo Sala, Fondazione Francesco Fabbri, Pieve di Soligo, Treviso 2018
                                                                                                        Premio San Fedele
7KDW·V,76XOO·XOWLPDJHQHUD]LRQHGLDUWLVWLLQ,WDOLDHDXQPHWURHRWWDQWDGDOFRQÀQH               Galleria San Fedele Milano 2017 (second prize)
curated by Lorenzo Balbi, MAMbo - Museum of Modern Art of Bologna 2018

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curated by Raffaella Perna, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Roma 2018                                        BIBLIOGRAPHY

Searching for myself through remote skins                                                               7KDW·V,76XOO·XOWLPDJHQHUD]LRQHGLDUWLVWLLQ,WDOLDHDXQPHWURHRWWDQWDGDOFRQÀQH
curated by Bianca Baroni, Renata Fabbri, Milano 2018                                                    exhibition catalog curated by Lorenzo Balbi, Corraini Editore 2018

Essere politico                                                                                         /·DOWURVJXDUGR)RWRJUDIHLWDOLDQH
DVSBUFECZ'JMJQQP.BHHJB 'POEB[JPOF'PUPHSBmB.PEFOB .PEFOB                                     exhibition catalog curated by Raffaella Perna, Silvana Editoriale 2018

8QGHUWKHLQÁXHQFH                                                                                      3URIDQDUHLOPHGLXPSHUSUDWLFDUHODYHUWLJLQH,UHQH)HQDUD
curated by Antonio Grulli, Fondazione Collegio Artistico Venturoli, Bologna 2017                        text by Pasquale Fameli, Forme Uniche Zero 2018

;PTRISLWUHDG\IRUWKHPRVK                                                                        HPHUJLQJDUWLVWVZRUWKLQYHVWLQJ
project by Valentina Lacinio, ARTVERONA, Verona 2016                                                    edition curated by Cesare Biasini Selvaggi, exibart.edizioni 2017

+RZWREXLOGDXQLYHUVHWKDWGRHVQ·WIDOODSDUWWZRGD\VODWHU5HODWLYLWLHV                            Irene Fenara
curated by di Marie Koch and Vladimir Demoule, Centre d’art de la Maison populaire Monteuil (FR) 2016   cover artwork and interview curated by Alessandra Caldarelli, INSIDEART#107 2016