Francesco Vezzoli: Musei delle Lacrime
Museo Correr, Venice
April 17 – November 24, 2024
From 17 April to 24 November 2024, Fondazione Civici Musei di Venezia and the Venice International Foundation present Musei delle Lacrime (Museums of Tears), a site-specific exhibition conceived by Francesco Vezzoli (Brescia, 1971) for the painting gallery of Museo Correr in Venice. The exhibition, located in the heart of Venice and curated by Donatien Grau, marks Francesco Vezzoli’s return to the fundamental aspects of his research, rooted in an interest in heritage and its interplay with contemporary culture and life. Invited by the Venice International Foundation, the artist engages with the city’s cultural heritage and offers his take on the Museo Correr’s historical collection and modern invention.
Featuring 36 works by Francesco Vezzoli and spanning over 20 years of his practice, the exhibition includes 16 works created especially for the show. For the first time in its history, the Venice International Foundation has worked with a contemporary artist to reimagine a venerated space in Venice, heralding a new chapter in its historical mission. This new vision, which combines the safeguarding and protecting of Venetian artistic heritage with the innovative power of contemporary art, is spearheaded by the Foundation’s president, architect and collector Luca Bombassei.
Francesco Vezzoli’s exhibition Musei delle Lacrime was designed for the painting gallery of the Museo Correr, creating a dialogue with both its storied collection of Venetian art, which includes masterpieces from the 13th to the 17th century, and the modernist interiors of the galleries, designed in the 1950s by Italian architect Carlo Scarpa. It is therefore a radical take on art history and heritage. The exhibition unfolds across 14 rooms, remaining discreetly embedded within their original layout and thus effectively forming a museum within a museum, where Francesco Vezzoli’s works build on Carlo Scarpa’s own interior designs.
Almost 30 years ago, Francesco Vezzoli began embroidering tears on images of well-known masterpieces, thus creating his own museum and challenging the very idea of the museum as a structure of power. The title of the exhibition references the motif of the embroidered tear, a common thread which the artist uses to lead the visitor on a journey through works of art from different eras. Through the intimate and highly symbolic technique of embroidery, Francesco Vezzoli draws on a wide range of personal references, contemporary cultural influences and traditional elements that make up his culture, to challenge artistic, social and political conventions and shine the spotlight on issues of pressing relevance, such as gender identity, aesthetics and representation.
Francesco Vezzoli sees the creation of his embroidered works as a private and intimate practice that allows him to challenge normative notions of masculinity and femininity. In this exhibition, he brings it into conversation with canonical art history, fostering a different experience of heritage and of our time. With Musei delle Lacrime, Francesco Vezzoli explores the marriage of modern and contemporary works of art, blending historical elements with contemporary and popular references and creating a new narrative that reflects on the essence of Venice as a city permeated by the dialogue between past and present. The exhibition is completed by a conceptual piece, an original audio guide written and narrated by the artist, which accompanies the visitor along the exhibition route, expanding into an interpretation on the works of art on view and enriching them with stories, food for thought and personalised suggestions. The installation elements of the exhibition were designed by Filippo Bisagni.
more. https://correr.visitmuve.it/it