Winged Victory and Nike without wings, the presentation of the project today (Monday 1 July 2024).
The presentation of the project Winged Victory and Wingless Nike
Municipality of Brescia and Brescia Musei Foundation today present Winged Victory and Nike Without Wings, a site-specific, relational and curative project, created in collaboration with the Greek artist Mary Zygouri and the La Rondine Cooperative, curated by Elettra Stamboulisthird action foreseen by ”(Extra)ordinary Mondays of Brescia Museums Foundation”the initiatives with which the Foundation was awarded the Cariplo Call for Culture 2023. The outcome of the creative process presented today in the Renaissance Cloister of the Santa Giulia Museum and is the result of a week of physical and emotional preparation around the abstract idea of victory in life.
Mary Zygouri is a visual artist born in Athens who lives and works between Greece and Italy. In her work she employs various artistic practices, using performance as an essential element of her poetics. Her actions are usually conducted in public spaces, usually strongly marked by history and intervene by causing unplanned artistic results. The artist adopts multiple roles: researcher, subject of the action, interpreter, but it is always the relationship between personal and collective that activates the process, at the basis of which is the participation of communities and different audiences, even fragile ones.
The curator of the project is Elettra Stamboulis, with whom Fondazione Brescia Musei already collaborates for exhibition itineraries dedicated to contemporary art and human rights, and who has identified Mary Zygouri to design and implement a workshop designed for the guests of the Cooperativa La Rondine in Brescia – a group of around 15 people with intellectual disabilities and their care staff – being inspired by the presence in Brescia, in the archaeological park, of the famous bronze statue of the Winged Victory.
The workshop, which was held for a week between the headquarters of the Cooperative and visits and tests at the Archaeological Park and the Museum of Santa Giulia, led the group to search for personal meanings by moving within the complexity of values contained in the image of Victory.
Wings, a symbol of flight, freedom and reaching heights have become the tool to bring one’s dreams aloft and implement a process of internal redemption.
Zygouri worked with a group of fragile subjects who, in common perception, are imagined as people with limited possibilities to dream and win, stimulating them to carry out an artistic action that combines the social intervention of art with the re-signification of heritage, a peculiar aspect of his artistic practice.
A quality and high profile experience
The Winged Victory and Wingless Nike project offered a high-quality, high-profile experience to a fragile audience: an invitation to reflect on cultural heritage and immerse oneself in the visions of others, approaching art and the testimonies of history through an interior and non-dogmatic path, activating a reverse process from fragility to normality so that any visitor can undermine their own preconceptions and superstructures.
Highlighted is a photo by Damiano Dargenio.
