Statement

Naples is often portrayed with stereotypes that simplify its multi-faceted nature and prevent newcomers from perceiving the complexity of this city. For this reason, and in line with the identity and interest of those who experience it daily, we depict and convey a contemporary, innovative, continuously evolving Naples. A city which is tied to a strong and clear identity that all its inhabitants feel strongly about, but nonetheless remains constantly perched between tradition and evolution, an “open-air” museum of the real and immaterial which speaks a popular language to relate to the contemporary age. A city which, even when its beauty turns it into a leading tourist attraction, never yields to becoming a glossy postcard, but stays true to itself and to its thousand contradictions.
And therefore, through cultural activities, events and its receptive structure, SuperOtium offers new points of view and perspectives to admire Naples and its surroundings, and to stimulate the possibility of building new meanings around what we observe every day. The context is the journey, which gives us a chance to observe things from different angles, to make new experiences and encounter new cultures. The tool is the encounter between individuals, a steadfast exchange and dialogue between travelers, artists, curators and creative talents in residence, local artists, curators and creative talents, and the museums and independent bodies and organizations working with culture and creativity which share this vision.

Residency program


The program of art residencies at SuperOtium was conceived to support Naples’ natural inclination to be a place of inspiration for new creative and artistic projects. Our interest lies in making these views hybrid, acting as a link between different points of view to create new tales of the city.
The residency theme is the point of view and how artistic and creative practices can act upon it. The context is the journey and the condition by which, as we exit our daily lives, we open up to the discovery of whatever is different or simply unknown.
Our program for artists and creative talents is articulated into several calls found below. The calls are periodically updated as we establish new partnerships and objectives. Some calls focus on research and others on production.

We ask all artists and creatives in residence to interact with the city trying to observe it from unusual points of view and to speak with our guests to discuss their work and their views on the city or to leaving a trace of their passage with, for instance, a work on consignment. Throughout their stay the SuperOtium team commits to providing them with different keys to access the city and aids them in their search for encounters, places, information and suppliers and anything else they may need to develop their research project.

Fill out this form to send us a request to participate in one of our calls.


describe in max 500 characters because Naples is interested in your search
describe in max 500 characters your project/research idea
describe in max 500 characters how you will use the time of your residence
indicate the preferred dates for your stay (max 500 characters)
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By submitting this form you authorize us to process your personal data pursuant to art. 13 of Legislative Decree 196/2003. These data will be processed in compliance with the safeguards required by current legislation in terms of privacy, and will be used solely for the purpose of providing the service requested and will not be disclosed to third parties.

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Artists in residence

HyperEden

The first residency at SuperOtium welcomed Hypereden, a collective of architects, designers and installation designers who curated the interior design project for SuperOtium. A refurbishing project with a strong focus on detail and on the recovery of its nature and surroundings which made SuperOtium into a perfect place to combine traditional hospitality with events, exhibitions, dinners with artists, workshops, and more. The interior decoration, conceived and executed by Hypereden, sought to find a mediation between the the feeling of being elsewhere and the search for the familiar, which is the typical connotation of the traveler. Its goal is therefore to offer a type of hospitality capable of creating a sense of belonging but at the same time turning the stay into an emotional and personal experience.

Gianluca Panareo

As a cultural partner of the project Aperture designed by Riot Studio and Tecnosistem with the aim of inviting contemporary artists to reinterpret the city’s bond with historical and culturally significant locations, SuperOtium hosted Gianluca Panareo as an in-residence guest. Panareo is the author of the performative installation “Memini” curated by Marco Izzolino, and his residency coincided with SuperOtium’s inauguration. By working closely with the artist, the curator, and Riot, we were able to experiment our residency format and explore how we could create a dialogue between it and Naples. “Memini” is structured as a path, a Dantesque ascent through the characteristic aspects of the city, from the darkest and most infernal to the most sublime and enlightened. An investigation centered on the city, on its intrinsic characteristics that make this city unique, alive, volcanic, resistant to gentrification and depersonalization.

Kensuke Koike

Part of SuperOtium’s art residencies program, in collaboration with Ciocca Arte Contemporanea and in conjunction with the new call for art residencies, Kensuke Koike will be our guest from May 2 to 14, 2018. Kensuke is a Japanese artist who uses the analogical and visually illusive re-elaboration of images taken from postcards, photos, magazines to induce the observer to question his sense of reality. Kensuke uses paper to create sculptures which disregard the sense of the third dimension undermining the stability of the observer’s visual imagination. By means of a meticulous and highly accurate process, he transforms real images by cutting them into pieces and repositioning them in a plausible design within the same image to imbue it with new meanings.
The choice of inviting Kensuke in residency is based on the strong coherence between his work and the theme underlying the residency calls to be launched in mid-May, which will be focused on the exploration of the point of view. The idea is to lead artists and guests to reflect upon the possible new perspectives from and through which Naples can be observed.

Yasser Almaamoun - Goethe Institut

After several months of research and exchanges in the week between the 5th and 11th November 2018, Yasser Almaamoun’s residence closed with an exhibition / event. Architect and Syrian activist who lives and works in Berlin, his residence has been part of the Freiraum project, of the Goethe Institut, which involves 38 artists living in Europe to investigate the meaning of the idea of freedom. Curated by the Goethe-Institut of Naples, his research, inspired by the artistic video created for the alleys of the center of Naples by Bianco-Valente and Andrea Valentino, studies how the bodies move within the urban space, in the areas already investigated by Bianco-Valente and Fabio Landolfo, to propose solutions for urban-architectural change and trigger a debate on how we organize our living space.

Blase - ShowDesk

From the 6th to the 23rd of October 2018, as part of the ShowDesk artistic residency program, we have hosted the french artist Blase. He is presented as the “hacker-painter”. He works with old canvases, modifies them, distort them and transform them. His anachronistic game confuses the viewer by creating a visual short circuit. Blase’s goal is above all to denounce the corrupt aspects of a consummated society with sarcasm. During his residency he has worked on the creation of an out-of-the-ordinary exhibition. A complex exhibition project that aims to promote the territory through the dissemination of works in the urban and institutional context. Blase completely subverts the residency project by bending the realization and the final result, as it happens in his works.

Khaled El Mays - EDIT Napoli

On September 2018 SuperOtium hosted, as part of the residency program of EDIT Napoli, Khaled El Mays, designer from Lebanon which design practice pays close attention to the material and celebrate the importance of the process. EDIT Napoli is an innovative design fair in Napoli created to support, promote and celebrate a new generation of designers who is ate forefront of a movement that is challenging the traditional chain of production and distribution.

Nuvola Ravera - Soap Opera

In February 2019, on the occasion of the new exhibition SoapOpera, we had the artist Nuvola Ravera in residence. The work realized by Nuvola in collaboration with the arch. Giuseppe Ricupero and curated by Chiara Pirozzi, inaugurated on February 15 with a site-specific project realized for and in the new Lab.Oratorio space that the Fondazione Made in Cloister (client of the project) dedicates to research, experimentation and exhibition of the young contemporary art scene. The exhibition is realized thanks to the support of Mibac and @siae within the initiative “Sillumina – copia privata per i giovani, per la cultura”.

Massimo Uberti + Rossana Ciocca

Part of SuperOtium’s art residencies program from 17 to 25 March 2019, in the company of Rossana Ciocca (ArtCity Lab), our next guest artist will be Massimo Uberti. During his residency the artist will work on “Doors” a public art project conceived by Massimo Uberti in collaboration with ArtCityLab. The project envisages the establishment of an abstract entrance door, permanently painted on the wall of a building near the port. The port is the place that can accommodate, as in the past, the “habitation” of different ideas and cultures. The “door” will be made like a mural, but using an exceptional material such as gold leaf.

Pietro Gaglianò

After inviting and hostig several artists and designers, as part of the residency program curated by SuperOtium, from 6 to 20 May 2019 is the time of the independent art critic Pietro Gaglianó. His research focuses on the line of individual liberties, the aesthetics of power, the subversive capacity of critical thinking and artistic work. During his residence Pietro Gaglianò will deepen the knowledge of the places and the people involved in the contemporary scene in Naples in conjunction with the writing of his new book on the relationship between art and time. The residence of Gaglianó will also be the occasion to participate in the open workshop “Il tempo dell’arte”, part of the program Incontri SENSazionALI, on the 14th of May from 4.00 pm, at the end of which, at 7.30 pm, a lectio brevis held by the same Gaglianò. The residence of Gaglianò confirms the aim of SuperOtium of creating new opportunities of encounter and hybridizing visions and points of view.

Camouflage

From the 25th to 30th of June for a first visit, we will have in residence two of the realities that take care of the project Camouflage: Visual Container and Ex-Voto. They will be at SuperOtium to develop the Neapolitan episode of the project for the coming winter, to which we will collaborate in its realization.
The residence will also be the occasion to exhibit the project on June the 26th at the Riot Studio with a selection of videos that have been part of the project and two special guests.
Camouflage starts from the very definition of the term (1 Hide the true appearance of someone with a disguise; 2 fig. Make something appear different from what it really is) to enhance the research of the performative dimension of producing images in the process of making the video.
Born in 2014 in Vegapunk and curated by the three artists Marisol Malatesta, Simona Da Pozzo and Alessandra Arnò, the project is the result of collaboration between Ex-Voto (Association for Radical Public Culture), VisualcontainerTV International Videoart WebTV, #Tilde, Arts University Bournemouth , Viafarini and NON Riservato.

Altofest - Menchetti/Cirera/Serrano

This year, as partner of the ALTOFEST project, we will have as artist in residence, from the 27th of June to the 7th of July the artist trio Menchetti/Cirera/Serrano working on their project RealFake.
During their stay the 3 artists will interact with SuperOtium, its guests, the town and its inhabitants, to realize a new edition of the project with 2 shows on the 5th and 7th of July (LINK A EVENTO).
RealFake is an interdisciplinary project born in 2016 interviewing various person in the street, targeting the issues of the news and manipulating them to see the reaction and the opinion of the people casually met on the street. Do interviewing with a camera gave complete legitimacy to the false information (up to the limits of the absurd). Through residences of performative and participatory research, an installation-performance device will be created, with the aim of showing live the manipulative artifice of the media in relation to immigration.
ALTOFEST is a project promoting culture as an essential element for the development of a territory and of its inhabitants. A festival made in collaboration with citizens from different areas of Naples and national and international organizations.
ALTOFEST is the home of shared new art practices, were every tearing down every possible wall between scene and audience, seeding beauty, letting the horizons bloom, inhabiting the wonder. During these last years we chose to give to the city our time, our money, our skills and knowledge.

Bianca Felicori - Forgotten Architecture

On the occasion of OpenHouse 2019 we invited Bianca Felicori, journalist, communication expert and, among others, creator of the Forgotten Architecture project, to a micro-residence.

The residence becomes an opportunity for Bianca to guide us to the discovery of a great shared archive of Forgotten Architecture together with other guests.

In fact, on the occasion of the residence there will be an informal meeting to enlarge the map and deepen the already mapped places.

Forgotten Architecture has no pre-established rules, but above all it is a project of pure and genuine sharing. The group starts from a first interpretation of the term: Forgotten should not be misunderstood as abandoned or poorly maintained, but has various nuances. Forgotten is the architecture of a great forgotten master, is the work of a minor architect never considered, is the small church of the archistar never studied at university and so on.

Emilija Škarnulytė

Starting from the 21st of September 2020 till the 21st of October 2020, in collaboration with the Lithuanian Culture Institute, we will host in residency Emilija Škarnulytė (b. Vilnius, Lithuania 1987) nomadic artist and filmmaker.

Working between documentary and the imaginary, Škarnulytė makes films and immersive installations exploring deep time and invisible structures, from the cosmic and geologic to the ecological and political. Her blind grandmother gently touches the weathered statue of a Soviet dictator. Neutrino detectors and particular colliders measure the cosmos with otherworldly architecture. Post-human species swim through submarine tunnels above the Arctic Circle and crawl through tectonic fault lines in the Middle Eastern desert.

Winner of the 2019 Future Generation Art Prize, Škarnulytė represented Lithuania at the XXII Triennale di Milano and was included in the Baltic Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Biennale of Architecture. With solo exhibitions at CAC, Vilnius in 2015 and Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin in 2017, she has participated in group shows at Ballroom Marfa, Seoul Museum of Art, Kadist Foundation, and the First Riga Biennial. Her numerous prizes include the Kino der Kunst Project Award, Munich (2017); Spare Bank Foundation DNB Artist Award (2017), and the National Lithuanian Art Prize for Young Artists (2016). She received an undergraduate degree from the Brera Academy of Art in Milan and holds a masters from the Tromsø Academy of Contemporary Art.

Her films have been screened at the Serpentine Gallery, UK, the Centre Pompidou, France and in numerous film festivals including in Rotterdam, Busan, and Oberhausen. She is a founder and currently co-directs Polar Film Lab, a collective for analogue film practice located in Tromsø, Norway and is a member of artist duo New Mineral Collective, recently commissioned for new work by the First Toronto Biennial.

During the residency,

During the residency, Emilija will explore the underwater and underground Naples for the production of her latest project and will present her works through studio visits and a round table.

Souvenirs, Napoli
Giovanna Silva in dialogue with Lorenzo Xiques

SuperOtium is pleased to announce
Souvenirs, Naples
Giovanna Silva in dialogue with Lorenzo Xiques

the first artist residency of the year 2021 in the spaces of SuperOtium which will take place from 15 to 28 February 2021.

A year after the first lockdown taken in Italy due to the coronavirus emergency, photographer Giovanna Silva returns to Naples, the fourth stop after Milan, Genoa and Rome, for a residency to rediscover a city proud of its architectural and urbanistic charm, and at the same time protagonist of a change that is marking the way of life and crossing all those metropolises with the highest population density in Italy.

“Since I can no longer travel abroad, I am considering a book that combines my architectural walks through the cities of Italy.
My interest is architectural, but also exploratory and performative; I take photos with my i-phone, not for lack of a camera, but precisely because the i-phone allows you to be more discreet and immediate.
I take photographs following the paths and advice of the people I interview, creating and following a ‘map’ of stories that allow me to get to know the city better.”

The “stories to be told about the city of Naples”, due to the ambivalent way in which it is often perceived and enjoyed by those who visit and live there, is one of the themes that has fascinated Lorenzo Xiques in recent years, a young curator and queer activist in the Naples area, whose latest exhibition “Vendi Napoli e poi Muori” inspired by the novel of the same name by Gennaro Ascione” held at Galleria Fonti.

“The way of crossing and living the city, in particular that of Naples, is very different depending on whether you are a queer person or a member of the cisgender society.
Queer communities, or in general those oppressed by the patriarchal system, have always had to identify and create “SAFE” places and paths where they can freely live their identities. These are places and stories that are often not beaten (neither on the road nor on the typewriter) by the people who arrive on the territory, as they are hidden places by their nature or because they are deliberately censored.”

The meeting between Giovanna Silva and Lorenzo Xiques will become the occasion for a research laboratory that will send the two actors on an advance scouting trip through the city of Naples, in search of places and stories – in a period marked by the restrictions due to the “yellow zone” imposed by the DPCM – and of new suggestions and revelations useful for the restitution of a “map” in images of the post-pandemic city.

The year 2020-21, the year of the pandemic, will be remembered above all for its images, and their ability to tell the stories – or the silences – that marked it.

The completed project will be presented on 27 February at 4 pm at the end of the artist’s residency.

During the residency it will be possible to meet Giovanna Silva by booking a studio visit.

Grand Tour en Italie | Napoli

Grand Tour en Italie, an itinerant artist residency program, conceived and curated by Susanna Ravelli and Michela Eremita, which involves mid-career artists to reflect on the themes of travel and migration, lands in Naples, in collaboration with SuperOtium and with exceptional partners such as MANN, National Archaeological Museum of Naples, MetroArt / ANM Naples, Migrantour, the Center for Postcolonial and Gender Studies and the MAM Research Group Mediterranean archives of the University of Naples “L’Orientale”.

The residence is developed with the collaboration of SuperOtium, which, as a residence space, will host the artists, will be a study / laboratory of their work and will contribute to the construction of the Neapolitan edition program.

The Neapolitan stage of the project is inspired by the Grand Tour, intended as a practice of training and artistic production in the footsteps of the tradition of travel made by intellectuals and artists between 700 and 800.
The themes related to the exploration of unknown places thus become an opportunity for meeting and migrating acquires a positive connotation, becoming synonymous with exchange, that intertwining with the different that leads to an enrichment and expansion of knowledge. The intent is to narrate Italy through the gaze of some selected artists and artists who, through their work which consists in the creation of a real travel diary, express the impressions received by a specific geographical area with its people, its culture and its historical – artistic heritage.

The protagonists of this residence, all female, are: Simona Da Pozzo, Serena Fineschi, Stefania Mazzola.
The artists will take advantage of the residence and meeting with the realities of the Neapolitan city to create new works, in the form of an in-progress project with drawings, images, sculptures and artist notebooks.

The visiting artists will be joined by the visiting artists: Maura Banfo, Sophie Ko, Valeria Manzi, Concetta Modica, in addition to the contribution of Giuseppina Giordano in correspondence with Japan.

The residence, which will begin on March 8 and will engage the artists in a series of workshops and meetings that will end on March 14 with a special white night.

The traces of the work produced during the residency will find space, thanks to the collaboration with MetroArt / ANM of Naples, in four advertising spaces in as many subway stops in dialogue with the design of the art stations. A preview of what will then be the final exhibition.

Measuring the unmeasurable - Paz Ortúzar

Measuring the unmeasurable – Paz Ortúzar
From 3 to 12 November 2021
Curated by SuperOtium
Promoted by Ex-Voto – radical public culture
Supported by the Cervantes Institute of Naples
Supported by the Cervantes Institute, as part of the Espacios Ocupados programme, that celebrates the 30th anniversy of its foundation.

In the framework of Espacios Ocupados program, in occasion of 30th anniversary of Cervantes Institute, SuperOtium presents Measuring the Unmeasurable. As part of its program the project is a research residency involving the Chilean artist Paz Ortúzar for a confrontation with the city, through explorations and exchanges with local people and realities, on the theme she has been pursuing of measurement systems, understood as an authoritarian imposition, made of irremovable infrastructures and truths, where inaccuracy becomes an action of heretical disobedience. The residency will end with a public restitution of the artist’s research in the form of an open round table.

Agenda of the residency:
On 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th November exploratory tours, meetings with representatives of the cultural world, and planning of actions in the public space.
8th, 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th November actions in the public space related to the artist’s research and portfolio review by appointment.
10th November public restitution meeting open to the city, by appointment with local guests to be confirmed.

Quoting the artist: “During the last couple of years, I have been researching about the metric measurement system and the relevance that it carries as an underlying infrastructure that allows the persistence of the savage capitalism in which we are immersed.
The metric system was created in Europe in the XIX century, from there it was imposed to its colonies and later, to the rest of the world. This caused the disappearance of a multiplicity of systems of measuring specific to each city or village, which were also tied to particular spiritual beliefs. Once the metric system was imposed, those beliefs were also emptied, giving absolute power to Catholicism reigning in most Western European countries. In this way, the metric system and Catholicism forced a monotheism that annihilated any kind of paganism both in science and in the spiritual realm.
Considering this relationship between measurement and divinity, there is a strong connection between some of the objects, symbols, and actions performed by the Catholic religion around the consecrated communion wafer and the handling, cleaning and display of the Platinum-Iridium Kilogram Prototype, also commonly referred to as The Big K. [1]
Naples was one of the cities in Europe that resisted the standardized use of the metric system, maintaining its measurements (there were many and very diverse) for many years even though Italy was one of the original countries that signed the Metric Convention. Furthermore, Naples is still one of the cities with more Catholic churches in the world. These facts make Naples a strange blend, a divergent space with a sharp tension held by these two vertical institutions.
My project consists of a pilgrimage of several days visiting the most important Catholic churches in Naples. During those visits and walks, I will perform a series of simple actions weaving together some of the symbols and rites linked to both the communion wafer and The Big K.”

Paz Ortúzar, is a Chilean interdisciplinary visual artist and researcher, with a practice in writing and translating. Her present artistic research is focused on systems of beliefs, feminism and the hegemonic standardization of knowledge in colonized territories. Through her practice she seek to apprehend and question physical, cultural, and spiritual truths. Her work is composed process-based pieces that use language, time, and found objects as raw material.
She earned a Bachelor in Fine Arts and a Certificate in Latin-American Art Aesthetics (PUC, Chile). Later on, she studied a Master in Fine Arts with an interdisciplinary focus (UPENN, USA) and an Advanced Master in Artistic Research in a Socio-Political Context (Sint Lucas Antwerp, Belgium). Her work has been exhibited internationally at venues such as Fjord Gallery, Philadelphia and The Arnold and Sheila Aronson Galleries, New York (USA); MUCHA, Mendoza (AR); FRANZ JOSEP KAI 3, Vienna (AT); Goethe Institute, Salvador (BR); Galería Gabriela Mistral in Santiago (CL) and RAAT, Antwerp (BE) among others.
Additionally, she have worked collaboratively with curators, artists and collectives developing exhibitions and independent curatorial projects.

SuperOtium, an art-residency space for contemporary cultures, which will curate the residency project. SuperOtium will welcome and mentor the artist during her residency;

Ex-Voto, radical public culture, project promoter, realizes projects centred on the practice and theme of active socialisation and co-creation, as tools for enhancing the activity and resources of the territory, communities and communities.

Instituto Cervantes Nápoles, is an institution created by the Spanish State in 1991 with the aim of promoting the teaching of the Spanish language, disseminating Spanish and Hispano-American culture and participating in the development of cultural exchanges throughout the world. It is based in Madrid and in Alcalá de Henares, the birthplace of the writer Miguel de Cervantes. The Instituto Cervantes is present in 88 cities in 45 countries on the four continents.

Espacios Ocupados, The project Measuring the Unmeasurable is part of the Espacios Ocupados Programme, an initiative that seeks to develop trajectories in different directions that serve to relate Spanish-speaking artists to contexts, cultural actors and places in the centres of the Cervantes Institute network, with the idea of bringing artistic practice and its creators closer to the citizens of the world.
We believe that it is time to focus on projects that foster relationships between different people, creating common channels of communication and bringing people together through art to be surprised by ever-changing situations. Through artistic residencies in specific places, other ways of thinking and feeling arise in order to be able to understand and share questions and possible answers.

Look Forward - Sevana Holst

From February 15 to 25, 2022, the artist residency entitled Look Forward, a special prize of the 2021 edition of ReA! Art Fair, comes to life thanks to the support and collaboration of Silent Art Explorer, a project supporting emerging talents in the art world.
The winner of the special prize edition 2021 is the artist Sevana Holst, selected by the scientific committee of ReA! Arte, Silent Art Explorer, SuperOtium and Tiziana Di Caro – owner of Tiziana Di Caro Gallery in Naples.

The artistic residency activity entrusts the winning artist with the mission to answer the question “What is your future vision of contemporary Naples?”. This question will be the leitmotif that will guide the various activities planned during the residency that will lead the artist to explore the Neapolitan territory and imagine it with a look towards the future, trying to solve the contemporary criticalities.

Sevana Holst, winning artist, declares:

“During my stay at SuperOtium, I would like to focus my research on a specific aspect of the city: where is the place and what is the role of the Word within the public space?” . Today the word is used as a tool for consumerism (see advertising) and to impose limits (see signs and prohibitions). Is there, then, a space where it can exist for no other purpose than its beauty?
My project starts from the observation and exploration of the city with the aim of expanding or creating a new space where the Word can exist for itself in contemporary Naples”.

Sevana Holst, is a French-American writer and visual poet who explores the limits and aesthetics of language by experimenting with visual and concrete poetry, inspired by poets such as Susan Howe, Paula Claire and Giulia Niccolai. Holst studied History at the Sorbonne and Persian Studies at INALCO (Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales), beginning her professional life as a translator and freelance writer collaborating with theaters and artists in Paris. Through her work, she unites both the visual and literary realms in pursuit of a complete desacralization of both text and image.

Silent Art Explorer (SAE), is a private project supporting emerging art talent co-founded by emerging collector Giulio Raffaele and Aurora Rossini, a communications professional. SAE’s activity focuses on the work of emerging artists and on the role of the collector as a supporter of art projects – beyond the purchase of artworks. In addition to supporting creative talent, SAE combines the goal of supporting talent in professions related to the arts and culture sector, as well as facilitating valuable exchanges within the professional ecosystem.

ReA Arte Cultural Association, founded by a group of young female cultural entrepreneurs in January 2020, is the organizer of ReA! Art Fair. The annual event, which takes place in Milan’s Fabbrica del Vapore venue, aims to go beyond the traditional fair model, supporting – in an increasingly challenging market – transparent sales, flanked by adequate representation and fair value of the works. ReA! Art Fair creates a dialogue between deserving new talents, collectors, the public and numerous national and international institutions, with the aim of promoting emerging talents – through awarding prizes, organizing solo and group exhibitions and publishing catalogs.

VVV-R Becoming the Skin of the Snake

VVV-Residency is a project curated by VisualcontainerTv and Vegapunk.
VVV-Residency is a virtual space of critical reflection and a production time for videoart.
The residency focus on the video-trouvé as a tool to look at one’s own research through the eyes of others: a topic to face nowadays to explore how human interaction and perception of reality is continuously glitching within screen interfaces.
Artist in residency engage with different digital tools: a blog, webinar platform, digital and physical archives, a streaming platform.
A specially dedicated online blog, is the space on which artists intervene through posts sharing with other artists and tutors the work in progress of their work. It’s a kind of shared diary of images enlightening the visual link between the researches.
The residency is finalized to the realization of video works that will presented in the frame of the online exhibition running in streaming on VisualcontainerTv for one month.

VisualcontainerTv International Videoart webchannel, curated by Alessandra Arnò, has been presenting videoart projects and festivals under the care of curators and festival directors, interviews, and monograph programs from all over the world, since 2009. It’s a big renowned cultural project made for videoart lovers, students, curators, and all audiences, a place where to find the best videoart selection for free and for cultural purposes. The project aiming to spread the fresh and latest researches in the videoart scenario under the care of visualcontainer and many other partners around the world into a overall view.

Vegapunk is an artist run space&time of sharing artistic practices. It is an extension of Simona Da Pozzo‘s artistic practice into the domain of curating driven by impromptu curiosities. The focus is on artistic practice as both an intellectual and physical process guided by dialogue (between people, formats, disciplines). Vegapunk tends to build collaborations with artists whose discourse stretches beyond the artistic frame to include researches entangled with the world, also in a social and political sense. The attention to the relationship between space and time, both in a physical and aesthetic sense, leads Vegapunk to favor time-based projects and to define Vegapunk as an artist- run-space-&-time. Vegapunk is a project born in the frame of www.ex-voto.org.

Amor Vacui - Martina Merlini

From 9 to 19 January 2024, Martina Merlini‘s residency will kick off SuperOtium’s cultural activities in the new year by recounting and applying her research to the city of Naples, while being inspired by the city and its complex context.

Her residency fits into this season’s theme Look Closer, an invitation to look closely at things to discover their details, depths and imperfections.

Martina Merlini’s work, starting from her research on the limit and its overcoming, on randomness contained in precisely defined forms, on the rational and the irrational, in Naples will be confronted with a profound research on the ‘void’ in a city where emptiness is something far removed from everyday experience (visual and perceptive) and is often feared.

In fact, this research will be declined in experiential, emotional, memory and architectural contests as fields of investigation for the production of a new work by the artist with the support of local craftsmen.

During her residency, the artist will question people, who will participate in the various activities or with whom he will come into contact, asking them to share indications of places, lived experiences, memories, emotions, which represent a void.

On the 11th of Jannuary an exhibition will display a selection of her previous works.
The exhibition will be an opportunity to get to know the artist’s work and to take part in the mapping of the places to which lived experiences, memories, emotions are linked, representing a “void” from which Martina Merlini will produce a new work guided by the artist Teresa Cervo, for the use of papier-mâché, and assisted by the Cerasa collective ceramics workshop.

To promote the meeting between the creative community in Naples and those coming from outside, we invited a dense network of realities linked to the world of cultural art to collaborate: Altofest (an international live art festival in close contact with the inhabitants whose private spaces become the place where performances take place and develop), Attiva Cultural (which develops projects related to the dissemination and promotion of contemporary art such as the Art Days – Napoli Campania and the Magazine Ōpēra), l’Arsenale di Napoli (a cultural startup that generates a Museum of Culture and Immaterial Arts of Naples and Campania), Open House Napoli (an original format that allows citizens to discover architectures and themes of the past the present and the future of the city), Silent Art Explorer (a project for the promotion and support of contemporary art and art workers), Studio Cervo (the studio of artists Erika Nevia Cervo and Fabrizio Cicero that opens up and meets with the city through the organisation of exhibitions and projects), Underneath the Arches/AquaAugusta (a site-specific contemporary art programme in the archaeological site of the Augustan aqueduct, in the Borgo Vergini-Sanità area).

During her stay in Naples, the artist will present some of her works, meet the local artistic and creative scene, and explore the area in search of ’emptiness’. During her presence, it will also be possible to make studio visits by appointment to view the artist’s portfolio and learn more about her work and research.

BIO
Martina Merlini, born in 1986 in Bologna, is an Italian artist who lives and works in Milan.

Her work starts from the influence of 1960s and 1970s graphics, from the simple and functional forms of the logos and patterns of those years; it passes through editorial graphics and is influenced by the imprint imposed by the design of exhibition spaces, ultimately presenting itself as an artistic production in constant evolution. Her works range from illustration to graphics, from street art to land art and tell of her harmonious relationship with nature.

Martina explores new techniques and materials – developing and refining her technique in recent years through the use of wax and enamel on poor substrates such as wood and paper – reflecting her search for formal balance and geometric harmony, while at the same time attempting to define a rawness that recalls the typical randomness of nature, but also the invisible rules that run through it.

Natural representations and abstract images coexist in her art in a continuous search for dynamic balance, achieved when rigorous, geometric lines are juxtaposed with the flow of natural instincts and impulses. As a careful researcher of human nature, Martina plays with geometric lines, investigating the notion of limits in a subtle and refined way. Perennially poised between the rational and the irrational, the artist uses dense and symmetrical pictorial strokes by nature to pursue her research.

Merlini’s works have been exhibited throughout Europe and in the United States, Mexico, Australia and Brazil. She has participated in several events and festivals, including Living Walls, the first street art festival made by women, in Atlanta, USA in 2012; she took part in the prestigious Le Mur in Paris in 2015; she did a residency in Queretaro, Mexico, in collaboration with Galerie Libertad in 2017 and a project with the Italian Consulate in Brazil and the Museu Naciolal de Belas Artes in Rio de Janeiro in 2019.

A Doll for a Closer Look - Pierre Antoine Vettorello

A Doll for a Closer Look

Artist Residency by Pierre-Antoine Vettorello

Part of the Cultural Program of SuperOtium

From February 15 to 25, 2024

Public Presentation Event on February 24, 2024, from 4:00 PM to 8:00 PM

Studio visits by appointment from February 15 to 24, 2024

At SuperOtium

via Santa Teresa degli Scalzi, 8 – 80135 Naples

A Doll for a Closer Look is the title of the artist residency featuring Pierre-Antoine Vettorello, who will animate the spaces of SuperOtium (art residency space and boutique hotel) from February 15 to 25, 2024.

On February 24, 2024, from 4:00 PM to 8:00 PM, a public event at SuperOtium will allow participants to engage with the artist’s research, featuring the presentation of a work created during the residency.

This project is part of the artist residency program at SuperOtium (a project by Nicola Ciancio and Vincenzo Falcione), curated by Nicola Ciancio, following the theme of this season, Look Closer, an invitation to examine things closely to discover details, depths, imperfections, and truly connect with the city. The residency program is under the Matronage of the Donnaregina Foundation for Contemporary Arts.

The project A Doll for a Closer Look is produced with the financial support of the European Union and the Goethe Institute.

Pierre-Antoine’s research bridges fashion design and art with a critical and aesthetic approach to narratives about diasporic communities and decoloniality. He favors textiles as his medium of choice, with the use of patterns and prints. The title of the residency is derived from employing dolls to express a narrative of fashion history, inspired by Saint-Louis’ fashion historian Fatou Niang Siga, and how these miniature figures can also symbolize messages of existence and resistance within the urban environment.

During his residency at SuperOtium, the artist will delve into the look closer theme and present a work created during the residency through encounters with the Senegalese community in Naples and, more broadly, with individuals whose stories he will encounter. Starting from the historical experience of Senegalese women practicing textile craftsmanship during colonial times, the artist’s research emphasizes allowing the emergence of alternative narratives, and a collective memory.

The main and essential partner for the project is Senaso, a Social Enterprise founded by Pierre Preira and Louis Benjamin Ndong, both of Senegalese origin, living in Naples for almost 20 years. They have decided to invest in creativity and opportunities in the local area. Thanks to their support, Pierre-Antoine will engage with the Senegalese community in Naples to develop his research and investigate Naples’ crossroads of cultures.

To promote interaction between the creative community in Naples and those from outside, a network from to the world of art and culture has been invited to collaborate: Ex-Voto, radical public culture project promoter (developing participatory cultural and artistic projects and networks as a tool for collective development), Altofest (international live art festival in close contact with residents whose private spaces become the venue for performances), the Arsenale di Napoli (cultural startup generating a Museum of Culture and Immaterial Arts of Naples and Campania), Circolo Scandinavo (a Scandinavian association based in Rome that promotes cultural exchanges between the Nordic regions, Italy and the rest of the world), Progetto Museo (formed by art historians to protect, enhance and promote the cultural and museum heritage of Naples), Silent Art Explore (project promoting and supporting contemporary art and art workers), Studio Cervo (studio of artists Erika Nevia Cervo and Fabrizio Cicero that opens up and interacts with the city through the organization of exhibitions and projects), Underneath the Arches/AquaAugusta (site-specific contemporary art program in the archaeological site of the Augustan aqueduct, in the Borgo Vergini-Sanità area).

Throughout the residency, studio visits can be scheduled by appointment to view Pierre-Antoine Vettorello’s portfolio and learn more about his works and research.

Pierre-Antoine Vettorello is a Brussels-based designer, teacher, and PhD researcher at the Sint Lucas School of Arts and the University of Antwerp. He studied textiles in Paris, fashion design at the Department of Fashion in Antwerp (MA), and artistic research at Sint Lucas (MA) in Antwerp. In his current doctoral research, he explores the intersection of fashion and decoloniality, using family photos and indigo dye to create replicas of clothing worn by Senegalese Women. In 2022, Vettorello conducted research on African fabric shops in the Parisian neighborhood of Goutte d’Or, delving into the history of fabric stores and how they shape narratives with local diasporic communities. This research resulted in a solo exhibition at Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. Vettorello teaches at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels and the Marangoni Institute in Paris.

SuperOtium is a house in the heart of Naples, founded by Nicola Ciancio and Vincenzo Falcione, designed to welcome tourists, artists, travelers, and creatives. A meeting place where artist residencies, events, exhibitions, and accommodation coexist to inspire artists and creatives and challenge the assumptions of travelers, proposing new perspectives through which to view the city. The SuperOtium residency program has hosted, among others, Kensuke Koike, Pietro Gaglianò, Massimo Uberti, Hypereden, Bianca Felicori (Forgotten Architecture), Paz Ortùzar (in collaboration with the Cervantes Institute of Naples), Giovanna Silva (in collaboration with Lorenzo Xiques), Nuvola Ravera (in collaboration with Made in Cloister), Blase (in collaboration with ShowDesk), Yasser Almaamoun (in collaboration with the Goethe Institut), Khaled El Mays (in collaboration with Edit Napoli).

Artworks

Our home gallery is enriched with every encounter, residency and collaboration with works on consignment or for viewing. The common denominator between all the selected works is the attempt to stimulate the observer to search for new perspectives from which to contemplate Naples and more.

Memini

Author: Gianluca Panareo

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The five photographs constitute the final – but not conclusive – act of an artistic research experience that took place in Naples during the first half of 2017. It was a project, titled MEMINI, conceived by the artist Gianluca Panareo, which was part of the first pilot and experimental act of an artistic event called APERTURE. This event, designed by Riot Studio in Naples, has been designed to trace unpublished paths in the city of Naples through the eyes of artists and their peaceful invasion of historical (or culturally significant) spaces with site-specific interventions able to attract citizens and visitors for visit them with “new eyes”.
To know more: aperture.riotstudio.it
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Portable ground

Author: Simona Da Pozzo

photography, Mis UT7 carbon print on Hahnemuhle Pearl 320g paper mounted on aluminum |edition 1/5 | dimensions: 75×120 cm.
Pau> Paris > Milan is part of Portable Grounds project that Simona Da Pozzo runs since 2009. She shifts pieces of ground from a place to an other to build Ubiquity Access Points: little portions of somewhere else, spots enabling passers-by to be in different places at the same time. The passers-by are called to interact with the Portable Ground during its displacements: the artist ask people to help her caring the Portable Ground and sharing the “weight of belongin”, thus opens reflections on issues, such as feeling foreign, the concept of frontier and citizenship. A transparent container shows the composition of the ground (asphalt) and the coordinates of its original location, allowing for a constant re-contextualization of the object and reinterpretation.
Pau>Paris>Milan is a pic realized in the frame of this intervention and outlines the contrast between soil, as a here and now, and horizon as weltanschauung.

Little Gatekeeper

Author: Kensuke Koike

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Little Gatekeeper – 2013 – switched vintage photo – 11.5 x 7 cm – ©Kensuke Koike
Little gatekeeper (small gate guardian) portrays a child who practices the art of the guardian of a dimensional door. The work is born from the idea of a world where there are various dimensional doors for other worlds guarded by as many guardians who help to pass them. This work expresses clearly and ironically Kensuke’s thought – “When you have an image you have all of them” – where the doors allow you to move from an image to its infinite transformations. In the work of this work, respecting the rule to include only elements already present in the image with analogue cut and paste, Kensuke has sought the way out of the rectangle thus creating the circular element that escaping from the image can include the vacuum in full.
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Fog/Truth

Author: Paz Ortúzar

70×100 cm
graphite and oil stick on paper. edition 1/1
SuperOtium residency program

The work is composed by a series of synonyms that starts with the word truth and ends with the word fog. The work is part of the artist’s research on the theme of languages and measurement systems, understood as authoritarian impositions, made of irremovable infrastructures and truths.

Paz Ortúzar, is a Chilean interdisciplinary visual artist and researcher, with a practice in writing and translating. Her present artistic research is focused on systems of beliefs, feminism and the hegemonic standardization of knowledge in colonized territories. Through her practice she seek to apprehend and question physical, cultural, and spiritual truths. Her work is composed process-based pieces.

Masquerade

Author: Kensuke Koike

Masquerade – 2014 – switched vintage photo – 13.5 x 8.5 cm
Masquerade (masked) constructs a mask that covers the face of the person portrayed in the image. This mask not only hides the face but alters the physiognomy of the person completely. Behind the photo, however, there are traces of its true identity as the mask is created by cutting and reversing the front and back of a portion of the image. A transformation that, by hiding a part of the body, makes a “normal” person “strange”. Through the geometric research, the perspective and the shadows the normal physiognomy of the people is hidden. A partial censorship, such as that practiced by mass media communication, that manages to transform the perception of reality ..

Grid

Author: Martina Merlini

120×80 cm
Acrylic, wax, enamel on wood panel
Milano, 2019

Artwork on consignment.
For more info write to project@superotium.it

BIO
Martina Merlini, born in 1986 in Bologna, is an Italian artist who lives and works in Milan.

Her work starts from the influence of 1960s and 1970s graphics, from the simple and functional forms of the logos and patterns of those years; it passes through editorial graphics and is influenced by the imprint imposed by the design of exhibition spaces, ultimately presenting itself as an artistic production in constant evolution. Her works range from illustration to graphics, from street art to land art and tell of her harmonious relationship with nature.

Martina explores new techniques and materials – developing and refining her technique in recent years through the use of wax and enamel on poor substrates such as wood and paper – reflecting her search for formal balance and geometric harmony, while at the same time attempting to define a rawness that recalls the typical randomness of nature, but also the invisible rules that run through it.

Natural representations and abstract images coexist in her art in a continuous search for dynamic balance, achieved when rigorous, geometric lines are juxtaposed with the flow of natural instincts and impulses. As a careful researcher of human nature, Martina plays with geometric lines, investigating the notion of limits in a subtle and refined way. Perennially poised between the rational and the irrational, the artist uses dense and symmetrical pictorial strokes by nature to pursue her research.

Merlini’s works have been exhibited throughout Europe and in the United States, Mexico, Australia and Brazil. She has participated in several events and festivals, including Living Walls, the first street art festival made by women, in Atlanta, USA in 2012; she took part in the prestigious Le Mur in Paris in 2015; she did a residency in Queretaro, Mexico, in collaboration with Galerie Libertad in 2017 and a project with the Italian Consulate in Brazil and the Museu Naciolal de Belas Artes in Rio de Janeiro in 2019.

Bribes et Essais

Author: Sevana Holst

22 x 64,5 cm
typewriting on paper
Edition 1/1

SuperOtium Residency Program

Artwork in Exhibition
Private collection Silent Art Explorer – Giulio Raffaele

Sevana Holst is a French-American writer and visual poet. She studied History at the Sorbonne and Persian Studies at the INALCO (language research institute), starting her professional life as an independent translator and writer.

Her work focuses on exploring the limits and aesthetics of language through visual and concrete poetry (taking inspiration from other female visible and tangible poets, such as Susan Howe, Paula Claire, Giulia Niccolai…). Through her work, she combines both visual and literary realms in search of a complete desacralization of both the text and the image.

Un Maiale e un Elefante

Author: Isotta Bellomunno

A pig and an elephant – 100 numbered and signed copies
“A pig and an elephant” is a collection of dreams, stories and personal thoughts. Sixty brightly colored tables that do not need words so that everyone can rediscover themselves in one of the characters, recognizing in their actions, their own story, their own life. Stories made of aggression, complex relationships, and communication difficulties, but at the end, they always have a happy ending.

It Doesn’t Matter

Author: Blase

It Doesn’t Matter
Oil on canvas
H 95 cm L 82 cm
©BLASE2017
Blase (1980 Paris, France) is presented as the “hacker-painter”. He works with old canvases, modifies them, distort them and transform them. His anachronistic game confuses the viewer by creating a visual short circuit. Through his experience and methods, Blase has gained an important reputation in the traditional art market, but his work is firmly contemporary. These radically conflicting worlds, so often closed to one another, are interconnected. His actions are always subtle and respectful of classical restoration protocols. Blase injects a new level of complexity to the time/image relationship that asks questions and eventually imposes a different perspective. Thanks to his radical methods he finds no difficulty in transmitting his strong message. Blase’s goal is above all to denounce the corrupt aspects of a consummated society with sarcasm. With the reappropriation of old paintings, Blase at the same time exalts and rejects the culture of “image”.

Stay with Me

Author: blase

Oil on canvas
60cm x 45cm
©BLASE2018

God Damned Pigeons

Author: Blase

Oil on canvas
H 56cm L 47cm
©BLASE2015

Entropy

Author: Blase

numerated copy printed on paper
of the original oil on canvas
2.75 m x 2.11 m
©BLASE2016

Activities

Discover our activities designed to discover Naples through its sites, itineraries, activities, and through the eyes of the locals who experience it every day and will make your journey truly special

The Insider Path

A cura di: In Side Here

The Insider Path is a journey “adrift”, designed while keeping in mind the needs, curiosities and interests of the visitor, never following a fixed itinerary – only vague points of reference. The itinerary takes shape along the way and becomes a special way of getting acquainted with the city. “Tell me what you like and I’ll lead you”, this is the philosophy behind the walk which will guide visitors through the discovery of places dear to those who inhabit and study the city. Art galleries and studios; clubs and hidden museums; ethnic restaurants; fast food places, and untraditional traditions are just some of the input you can use to start discovering a Naples you didn’t think existed. For information and booking project@superotium.it.

Artistic Paths

A cura di: In Side Here

Artistic Paths are itineraries resulting from the longstanding project Nomicosecittà, which for the past four years has guided numerous groups of people on the discovery of the city of Naples through a privileged perspective – the perspective of several artists who have chosen to live and work here. The material and work collected through the years allowed us to build a series of itineraries that lead the visitor to unusual locations throughout the city, all related to the life and imagination of the various important artists who operate in it. For information and booking project@superotium.it.

Itinerario Food&Art

A cura di: In Side Here

Food is one of the most immediate representations of a population’s culture. A community’s culinary habits are a cultural product just as much as its artistic heritage. Visiting a monument savoring typical products is one of the most effective and fascinating ways to explore a city. With this purpose Food&Art was born, an itinerary which emphasizes our culinary and artistic heritage. The itinerary was designed to associate every monument visited in a specific area to a tasty typical local dish. For information and booking project@superotium.it.

Your own souvenir

A cura di: SMMAVE

In the fantastic setting of SMMAVE, a center for contemporary art located inside the church of Santa Maria della Misericordia ai Vergini (from 1730 – with an underground area dating back to 1530), SMMAVE’s artists will host a sculpture workshop. After a visit inside the church, its underground, and a brief theoretical introduction, participants will be invited to create their own souvenir. Each group will work on a customized theme. For information and booking project@superotium.it.

Cooking class

A cura di: Gusto Sano Napoletano

Gusto Sano Napoletano invites us into their home, in the characteristic area of Montesanto, to discover countless new flavors. By means of cooking classes, guests will learn to combine recipes from the local tradition to obtain the perfect balance between nutrients and prepare healthy but above all tasty dishes. The class will end with a group dinner. For information and booking project@superotium.it.