CYNTHIA MONTIER: P.G.R. – PER GRAZIA E RIVOLTA
14 aprile – 30 maggio
P.G.R. – Per Grazia e Rivolta is the first solo exhibition in Italy of Cynthia Montier, artist and researcher who lives and works between Rome and Strasbourg. As a result of her residency at IUNO (2023 and 2024) and at Kora - Contemporary Art Center in collaboration with Ramdom, in Castrignano dei Greci (2024), the research conducted at ICPI (Istituto Centrale per il Patrimonio Immateriale), MUCIV-Museo delle Civiltà and at Casa Internazionale delle Donne di Roma, the series of works exhibited in the show P.G.R., reflects the aesthetic and strategic affinities identified by the artist in the spheres of the ritual and the political, which are in fact moved by the same urgency: that of opposing dominant ideas through imagination, offering an alternative to a future that appears predetermined, and conferring a transformative, almost thaumaturgic power to actions. In Montier's work, the symbolism elaborated by transfeminist movements finds an echo in the collective practices or rituals traditionally associated with female contexts. The imagery of witchcraft is emblematically related to weapons and instruments of self-defence. Ex-votos, cast or embossed, are transformed into objects charged with desire, testimonials to something that has occurred or can still take place. Documentary material and unpublished works together compose a collective history that not only needs to be rediscovered, but also rewritten.
With the support of Fondazione Nuovi Mecenati – Fondazione franco-italiana di sostegno alla creazione contemporanea; with support from MUCIV-Museo delle Civiltà; in collaboration with CEAAC (Strasbourg) and Kora - Centro del Contemporaneo in collaboration with Ramdom.
Special thanks to Alice Motard, Alice Labor, Kora, Stefania Consigliere, Stefania Baldinotti, Francesca Romana Uccella, Marco Marcotulli, Marco Stefanelli and Vito Lattanzi.
Download the critical text here
Critical text: Critical text:
Photo: Chiara Cor
The exhibition can be visited by appointment.
Cynthia Montier is an artist-researcher and speaker based in Strasbourg, her work bears witness to a strong relationship with public space and an attachment to the notion of groups, collective bodies and communities. Strongly influenced by the narratives, practices, affects and objects that emerge from her encounters, the artist mobilises popular, working-class, spiritual and militant methodologies from popular education, community pedagogies and feminist knowledge to generate and transcribe relational spaces. She draws her inspiration from forms that exist in historical fields or in past and contemporary social movements. most of her work takes the form of participatory devices, performative protocols, affective archives and objects to be activated (surveys, libraries, collections; gesture, writing, orality, etc.). From interviews to workshops, from surveys to performances, from rituals to events, from votive to speaking objects, she favours a range of formats as a mean of stimulating intuition. Considering the relationship as a form in itself, her approach acts as a channel between intercession and mediation - through which intuitive forms can be transformed into material data. Since 2019 she has formed a duo with Ophélie Naessens that explores the notion of mineral socialty and ritual pedagogies through the prism of dialogic forms, surveys and performances navigating between pedagogy, activism and stone rituals. Together with Sophie Prinssen, she runs the «activismes Ésotériques - magie - Performance - résistance» project (since 2021): a «research coven», a ritual and activist working group that gives rise to research sessions and performances in the public space, to which the nineteenth issue of the journal Proteus devotes an article in the de- dicated issue: «le rituel dans l’art». Her work has been shown at the CaC la Ferme du Buisson (noisiel), the institut d’art Contemporain de villeurbanne, the 49° nord 6° est Frac lorraine (metz), the magasin des Horizons (grenoble) and the Printemps de septembre (Toulouse), the musée d’art moderne et Contemporain in strasbourg, and internationally at aQB (Budapest), the Japanisches Palais (dresden), the Centre of gravity (Bristol), the Kleine Humboldt galerie (Berlin), The Tichter (Moscow), The Royal Holloway School (London), The National Ethnographical Musuem of Roumania ASTRA Museul (Sibiu), and the research center for contemporary art IUNO (Rome).