Exhibition in Hong Kong:
Date: 2021/12/08 – 2021/12/27
Venue: vA! (Hong Kong Visual Arts Centre)
Exhibition in Seravezza:
Date: 2021/12/08 – 2022/2/12
Venue: ARKAD Foundation
The Italian Cultural Institute of Hong Kong is honored to present FUSION, a cultural project that aims to create a dialogue between different realities and artistic experiences. Through a call for participation, artists working in Tuscany, a beautiful region of Italy, and Hong Kong, a southern part of China, are invited to co-create sculptural works using the two materials that tell the story of their territory: white Carrara marble from the Apuan Alps and wood from Hong Kong.
Curated by Silvia Vannacci (林嘉玉), the project is organised by the Arkad Foundation, which is founded by Cynthia Sah (薩璨如) and Nicolas Bertoux (尼古拉．貝杜), and by vA!. FUSION is in collaboration with the Italian Cultural Institute of Hong Kong & Macau and the Municipality of Seravezza and the institutional support of the Consulate General of Italy in Hong Kong to name a few.
The artists are, for the Tuscany side, Francesca Bernardini (范察絲嘉 ‧ 貝納丹尼), Lorenzo Vignoli (羅倫佐‧韋若利), Flavia Robalo (法比亞 ‧羅伯洛), Jacob Cartwright (積各‧卡特韋德) and Aurélien Boussin (奧利朗‧布辛) and, for the Hong Kong side, Danny Lee Chin Fai (李展輝), Yaman Chau (周圓緣), Ho Yuen Leung (何遠良), Margaret Chu (朱卓慧) and Violet Shum (岑嘉慧).
FUSION is a creative encounter, a call to literally combine skills and points of view. The sculptors who take part in it are participants in an unprecedented creative collaboration experience.
The first phase of FUSION started last June 2021. For a month five artists in Italy created their artworks using white marble, whilst five artists in Hong Kong created their artwork using wood. The ten works, five in marble and five in wood, were previewed last Saturday 24 July in the headquarters of the Arkad Foundation in video conference with Hong Kong. The event was an opportunity to meet the protagonists of this original cultural exchange between Italy and China, to preview the works and meet organisers and artists involved.
The exchange will take place in September: each artist will receive the work of a colleague in order to complete it on the basis of a shared artistic project and with their own reference material. The finished sculptures in the two materials will be exhibited simultaneously in December at the Arkad Foundation gallery and at vA!, even the works not physically present in the place of the exhibition will be appreciated thanks to a digital section that will virtually bring them together.
Silvia Vannacci (林嘉玉) – curator
Silvia is a curator and Chinese contemporary art specialist. With a background in sinology and art, she has been living and working in Shanghai since 2014.
Founder of the curatorial platform Contemporary Matters, she is also co-founder, together with American choreographer Anneliese Charek, of the project space :: home :: an independent centre for the performing arts located in the heart of Shanghai. Through the space’s monthly “home experiments”, Silvia concentrates her curatorial practice upon independent performance art, whilst bestowing an inclusive platform for experimentation, engagement, and fellowship.