F_AIR Artist in Residence - CURRENT EXHIBITION BY KALI NIKLOU
F_AIR continues to gain ground in its collaboration with artists for the residency program in via San Gallo. Upon closure of the latest residency of Lukas Makalicky from the Czech Republic, the artists' apartment opened up to host Greek artist Kali Nikolou for F_AIR's summer season. Kali taught traditional drawing techniques to students from FUA's School of Fine Arts while exploring in the meantime the various experimentations of her solo show, which will be viewable until September 14th. The exhibition, entitled "Do It Right When No One Is Looking", is her reflection on the state of the arts and art politics based on Italy's stereotypical image when representing Italian art to itself or externally. The exhibition aims to transform daily depending on integration with fine arts departments of FUA housed at the same campus. The viewer is encouraged to ponder new considerations of institutions, administrations and art education in Italian schools. The phrase created by the show title is significant in a country boasting a high percentage of the global art heritage and the successive negligence and conflicts of private interests and lacking funds present in Italian art today. The title calls for responsibility and suggests a subservience act as the only logical solution against the passivity and conformity of the arts.
About Kali:
Born in Greece in 1977, Kali Nikolou attended the Athens School of Fine Arts. Later she moved to Amsterdam to continue her studies at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, and has completed her masters program at Sandberg Instituut. Last year, Kali worked within a practical research program on social design that shed a light on social issues in specific areas in the Netherlands. Since the beginning of her artistic career, she has participated in various exhibitions in different countries. In her work she often uses and represents existing practices and policies of institutions, or any kind of environment in absolute conventional representation. She tries to exaggerate existing situations as an ironic comment by adding some unfamiliar or too familiar and uncomfortable elements. The act itself gets exposed in such unambiguous but simultaneously unexpected form, that manages to shift the participants feeling and impression from intimacy to strangeness and visa versa. Kali has exhibited her work in various places, from the Huis Marseille museum to a squatted mosque in Amsterdam, and exhibits in her home country as well as Xiamen, Istanbul and Venice.
Read FUA's interview of Kali here.
EXHIBITION INFO
Do It Right When No One Is Looking by Kali Nikolou
Curated by: Lucia Giardino
July 12 – September 14, 2012
Opening: July 12 h. 6.30 PM
Monday-Thursday 3.00 PM - 8.00 PM; Friday 10.00 AM – 3.00 PM
Free entrance
www.fair.palazziflorence.com
In collaboration with FUA Florence University of the Arts