the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art inaugurates powder powder powder, a site specific project by the Chilean artist Carolina Saquel coordinated by Alessio Boi. 6 medium and large video installations - including triptychs, diptychs and films, placed on the wall or on the floor - tell the plastic research undertaken by the artist in 2014 at the Ardia di San Costantino, the centuries-old event held every year in Sit it down, in the center of Sardinia, on the evening of 6 July and the next day at the first light of dawn. A wild ride of riders who, between two wings of the crowd, demonstrate their skill, recklessness and balentia along a circuit that reaches the Sanctuary and the church of San Costantino.The observation of the mountain of dust raised by the horse race gave the title to the shows and poses questions about how to film such a ritual today and what are the figurative and abstract limits of recording. The use of lightweight sports cameras placed on the bodies of horses and riders capture the interaction of bodies at speed from unusual angles: from the legs of the riders, from the backs of the horses, from the muscles in exertion, through the raised dust. The result is a journey into the equestrian world in which the tools and moments filmed (the object, the character or the action) are not separated. They work together and bring each other to life.

The sequences exhibited at the National Gallery are a selection of the material filmed over three years. These are unedited fragments of recordings obtained during the Ardia and its preparations; filmed rehearsals that experience speed, composition and meaning. Years later, these images led to the making of the films Tutto di Contrappunto (2018) and Paso Galope (2018), both on display. Carolina Saquel (Concepcion, Chile, 1970) lives and works in Paris. Graduated in Social and Legal Sciences at the Universidad Diego Portales in Santiago de Chile, in 1994 she started working as a lawyer. In 1995 he entered the Facultad de Bellas Artes de la Universidad Católica de Santiago. His days are thus divided making art in the morning and right in the afternoon, until he decides to stop working as a lawyer to devote himself to the Escuela de Artes. His works have been presented at film and video festivals in solo and group exhibitions (París: Kadist Art Foundation, Grand Palais, Espace culturel Louis Vuitton - Barcelona Fundació Joan Miro - Harbourfront Center, Toronto, Canadá - MAMCS - Bloomberg Space, Londres - Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart). From December 2018 to January 2019 he exhibits the Repetir hacia adelante exhibition in the Gabriela Mistral Gallery in Santiago (Chile), which shows part of his project made in Sardinia.