A Terra di u Cumunu

amandine joset-battini, flo*souad benaddi, toni casalonga, aurélie ferruel & florentine guédon, marcos ávila forero, asunción molinos gordo, hendrik hegray, judith hopf , suzanne husky, nicolas momein, gyan panchal, anna reutinger, rémi voche, jean-philippe volonter

While it has long been a sign of the permanence of a cyclical life, rocked by the rhythm of the seasons, rurality has not escaped the many changes inherent in modernity, starting with the drastic reduction of its place in our societies. Its continued hybridization with peri-urban areas, where housing estates are scattered, and tourist sites, which contract with the winter, testify to a fundamental plasticity that is also found in the transformation of farms under the impact of industrialization linked to the growth of the agri-food sector. Thus, rurality appears as a complex social environment at the heart of the cultural contradictions that run through this 21st century. From this point of view, it is the cursed part of an ecology, which too often treats nature as an idealized thing, recalling the necessary transformation of the material on which human work is based. Labor is perhaps the most striking sign that nature cannot simply be thought of as a simple entity to be preserved as an abstract counterpoint to an increasingly artificial and technological environment.

The exhibition A Terra di U Cumunu then borrows its title from the history of Corsica to metaphorize the collective appropriation of land which was widespread during the Genoese era where it was not cultivated.

While these open spaces were reduced in the 18th century with the rise of private property, these collective spaces are not simply a myth. They remind us that communal agricultural practices existed on the island territory and that these commons hold - just like art - a potential for sharing. A Terra di U Cumunu thus deploys different creations to non-literally draw a precious dialogue between art and the rural environment, far from the stereotype of contemporary art that flourishes above all in major international capitals.

Curator: Fabien Danesi