Personal exhibition of Gianluca Costantini
curated by Viviana Gravano and Elettra Stamboulis
June 5, 2021 – July 9, 2021
Gianluca Costantini, lives in Ravenna, is an activist artist who creates drawings, always working on issues related to Human Rights. His activities in newspapers and magazines, alongside installations, interventions in the public space, books and relational actions.
As he writes in the introductory text to the Elettra Stamboulis exhibition, “his propensity to bring together people who know how to do things and who intersect his curiosity is certainly something that comes from afar. Certainly this is the humus from which his second artistic identity was born, the one most difficult to label, which however has become substantially unique in the Italian scene, as an artist activist journalist … Difficult to combine everything in a single label. Hybridization is its form. “
The exhibition will exhibit various works and cycles of works that have undergone censorship, or have resulted in legal convictions for Gianluca or even a ban on entering some countries around the world. An exhibition that shows how being an activist, using an apparently “harmless” and perhaps less known tool than others, such as drawing, leads to being truly at the forefront in the various situations in which a right is publicly violated. On display, in addition to the artist’s drawings, there will be ample documentation, collected by Gianluca himself and which he considers part of his work, which testifies to the “appropriations” of his images from below: individual activists, movements or groups who have freely used his designs for political demonstrations, performances or other interventions.
The exhibition therefore works on the double track which, on the one hand shows the forms of ostracism, even violent, that Gianluca’s activity has found, especially on the institutional side, and on the other the ability of ordinary people to transform those works in a collective and shared heritage.
Works on Turkish President Erdogan will be shown, a portrait of Israeli President Netanyahu, who cost Gianluca an accusation of anti-Semitism by the US right and had him expelled from CNN (on which a documentation dossier will be shown); the drawings made during the trial of the Chinese artist Weiwei in Copenhagen; human rights work in Eritrea; a cassette with 400 drawings that tell the long and rich activity of the artist.
Over the years Costantini has produced images that have become true icons for those who fight against human rights violations, such as the portrait of Ilaria Cucchi, Giulio Regeni, Zacky, Willy Monteiro Duarte, but also of many lesser-known people. to the general public, but which through Gianluca’s work have acquired visibility and public attention.
Costantini has published several books including: Libia, with Francesca Mannocchi; At dinner with Gramsci, the slaughterhouse workshop. 1917 the declination of the Catanzaro Brigade, Pertini in the clouds, Pasolini’s secret diary all with Elettra Stamboulis; Julian Assange & WikiLeaks, with Dario Morgante, and several anthologies on his drawings, of which we cite the most recent Fedele alla linea. The world told by graphic journalism.
The exhibition is accompanied by a poster showing one of the artist’s symbolic images, with two presentation texts by Elettra Stamboulis and Viviana Gravano on the back.
Information to book at the Vernissage of the exhibition:
Vernissage
June 5-6, 2021
10.00 / 20.00
RESERVATION REQUIRED
the exhibition will remain open until 9 July 2021
Tuesday to Friday from 3pm to 7pm and Saturday from 10am to 1pm
ONLY BY RESERVATION
Attitudes Space to the arts, Strada Maggiore, 90. Int. 16 – 40126 Bologna info.attitudesbologna@gmail.com
