Ancient wisdom to disrupt contemporary pragmatism
Benni Bosetto (Milan, Italy, 1987) is an artist whose practice hinged around illustrations, wall drawings, graffiti, sculptures and performances. Since 2014 she has taken part in some residencies, numerous solo and group exhibitions. Delving into global cultures her research aims at casting lights on different sources of knowledge, other than the common narratives.
Image Courtesy: Benni Bosetto
As our society and its rhetoric are unstable, uncertain and confusing, Benni turns to a non-verbal type of communication, namely her artistic practice, in search of a way to express a parallel, uncanny reality to which she leans as in response to the general precariousness. The scientific world, with its alleged ability to always find an answer for almost everything, is seen crumbling in front of ancient types of cultures and wisdom. Therefore, she creates a counter-narrative, transforming and simultaneously subverting the state of things in which we live ordinarily and, most of all, not following any logical threads or common concepts of space and time. Instead, from an imaginary and mysterious – not necessarily dreamlike world, grotesque and alien forms are explored to shape our experience of the unique spatial and temporal dimension they generate.
Benni employs basic materials such as clay, graphite and ink or simply the body and sounds. Nevertheless, to the artist's eye, these possess the ability to make the works alive in a certain animistic way, as they closely bond her works to ancient art. She believes that images and forms not only engage emotionally, but also summon unperceived connections interlacing human beings with the natural domain. Her mixed-media practice creates pieces that are autonomous in their strange manifestations and impede any possible contextualization, getting along with an idea of art as something ineffable, elusive and disorienting. This alienation, apparently similar to the one permeating our current society, is instead a way to access another level of ambiguous consciousness, where to wander free from any predetermined constrictions.
She is now working for her two forthcoming exhibitions TBA (Campoli Presti, Paris) and Stultifera (MAMbo, Bologna). For society, Benni’s art shatters the frame of our sterile, cold, and dull reality to present lost forms of knowledge not based on rationality and pragmatism.
By Jessica Pividori