Curated by Lorenzo Benedetti

Inauguration: April 15, 2019, 6:00 pm

The exhibition is part of the Grand Tour Contemporaneo , an exhibition program conceived by the Contemporary Art Foundation Committee on the occasion of the 58th edition of the Venice Biennale.

At the Antonio Ratti Foundation, Rossella Biscotti presents a project with works that investigate the issues of migration and the consequent relationship with the territory . By highlighting historical facts, often forgotten, the artist seeks a conceptual transposition to highlight the changes. Biscotti analyzes these themes from the point of view of the animal and plant world with two works that interrogate the concept of decontextualization and research for the construction of new biological contexts.
The transformation of the territory is analyzed through the forced detachment from the place of origin and through research to build new biotopes, in which flora and fauna can restore a dimension of existence together.
The first work entitled Clara (2016) bears the name of the Indian rhinoceros imported in 1740 by Douwe Jansz Mout van der Meer, captain of the Knappenhof ship of the Dutch East India Company. Van der Meer immediately understood the importance of the pachyderm and organized a European tour to publicly exhibit it that for sixteen years intrigued the inhabitants of the cities of half of Europe. Clara, perhaps the most famous rhino in history, became an icon of one of the most important trade routes in European history. Biscotti reconstructs the weight of the animal in bricks that were used by the fleets of the East India Company to leave with a load towards the colonies. In this sense, bricks are an element that is linked to the void and the impossibility of reconstructing a different habitat for many species. Clara's translation into its weight, into the daily consumption of food and vice (seafaring stories tell that the animal was addicted to tobacco) and its monetary value (100,000 Louis of gold were offered by the sovereign of France for Versailles) represents the animal in terms of value that constantly changes but does not restore the unity of its being.
Created for the Antonio Ratti Foundation, the second work is linked to the Amorphophallus Titanium commonly called Aro titano and brought to Europe for the first time by the Florentine botanist Odoardo Beccari. The plant, endemic to Sumatra, Indonesia, has the characteristic of being the largest inflorescence in the plant world. In fact, it rarely blooms, and only for a few days, creating a huge flower that gives off a particularly unpleasant odor that attracts a type of beetle for pollination and that resembles that of the rotten meat of a carcass.
Rossella Biscotti reconstructs the life-size plant by printing the huge flower on fabric. The characteristic size of the inflorescence creates a direct relationship between the plant and the public, having the same proportions as a person. But the condition of exposure is a very precarious context for such a plant. In this way, as in the case of the rhinoceros Clara, the spectacularization and exposure of an exotic species becomes the cause of its deterioration and its disappearance.
The decomposition of the flower into printed pictures, which metaphorically represent the colors of which the image is composed, and the decomposition of Clara's weight, fundamental for resolving the practical question of its transport, speak of the exploitation and dismemberment of the exotic body with science and entertainment.