We had the good fortune of connecting with Camilla Boemio and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Camilla, can you talk to us a bit about the social impact of your business?

My work at the crossings of art and activism, in particular, under challenging political, social, and economic conditions. My practice focuses on interdisciplinary systems from an intersectional feminist perspective, with a focus on the social systems and ethics of ecologies. For example, my new book edited investigates the necessity to build communities, care and repair in communities, discovering alliances, exploring affinities, and consolidating solidarities. How should we live on this planet? The pandemic crisis has crystallized a physiological need for society. “The Edge of Equilibrium” (published by Vanillaedizioni) weaves a dialogue of many voices, instead of making a fixed statement, offering and offers a wider picture of art communities, alternative land-based, low-impact ways of living, that which address issues and dilemmas relevant for an epochal renovation.

The volume is composed of essays, interviews, artistic projects, and pioneering practices. The contributors are practitioners, artists, academics and theorists from the fields of the performing and visual arts, political science, journalism, culture activism, and social work. The volume intends to nurture public debate, focus artistic conversations, and act as an amplifier for energies and intensities of resistance. The volume expands pioneering  practices and inclusive theories who work at the crossings of art and activism, in particular those under challenging political, social, ecological and economic conditions.

With contributions by David Spero, Zanny Begg, Carolina Caycedo, Laura Cionci, Ed Gomez, Marco Ranieri, Marina Moreno, Maria Antonietta Scarpari, Ben Rivers, Hannah Hughes with Jamie Hamilton. The artist Oliver Ressler in conversation with Brandon Bauer; an Associate Professor of Art at St. Norbert College in De Pere, WI; the artist based in Los Angeles Elana Mann in conversation with the inter-disciplinary artist Robby Herbst. 

The Edge of Equilibrium was created by all participating artists, thinkers, as well as Irene Ranzato, Associate Professor of English Language and Translation at Sapienza University of Rome; Daniele Conversi, the Research Professor at the University of the Basque Country, Bilbao; Adrian Parr the Dean of the College of Design at the University of Oregon, philosopher and cultural critic; and Andréa Picard, critic. 

The publication was designed by the English-based Rick Casson.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.

My aesthetical imagination was educated during my childhood through a sort of hybrid atlas, in which dialogue the city of Rome with the Adriatic coast. Lastly, the Italian example embraces savage real estate speculation and touristic interests, causing the ruin of an Adriatic coastline: before, the chemical-steel industrial center (from the 1960’s until the early 1980’s); and afterward – converted into a healthy holiday beach for local bathers or those from northern Europe, especially Germany. For them, it becomes ADRIA, the perfect imaginary recreational Italy, very different from that of historic cities. No other film has portrayed this stretch of the coast as Michelangelo Antonioni’s masterpiece The Red Desert.

In deep psychological and physical isolation amid docks and factories, mists, and murky waters, the territory is altered, disguised, and disfigured.

In this context, the research of the beauty, of history of art, and a new balance between innovation and contemporary art formed my desire.

Speaking about my background; I have written and edited books; contributed essays and reviews to other books, journals, magazines and websites; given public lectures, talks, and conference papers.

My recent curatorial projects include the exhibition: Peter Ydeen: Easton Nights at AOCF58 Galleria Bruno Lisi, in Roma (summer 2021); Jérôme Chazeix: The coat of hipness (materiali velati) realized for Altaroma2020 agenda at Label201 (2020); the participation at Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ “Untitled” (Fortune Cookie Corner) an international group of 1,000 people to each manifest the work as a “place” as part of one total “site” of this expansive exhibition curated by Andrea Rosen Gallery and David Zwirner; and the pop-up exhibitions with artists David Stewart, Maria Elisa D’Andrea and Sean Gall curated with AAC Platform on PurpleWindowGallery.com (Chicago, 2020).

In August 2018; I took part in the VVM at Tate Exchange, section of Tate Liverpool.

In 2017, I curated Delivering Obsolescence: Art Bank, Data Bank, Food Bank with artists Fabio Lattanzi Antinori and David Goldenberg, a Special Project at the 5th Odessa Biennale of Contemporary Art, in Ukraine. The same year I curated KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCKING; Lanfranco Aceti solo show, supported by the Museum of Contemporary Cuts and Harvard Museum. The installation was site-specific and realized in the Mediterranean Garden pavilion on the New Sea Waterfront of Thessaloniki.

In 2016, I was the curator of Diminished Capacity the first Nigerian Pavilion at 15th International Architecture Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia; and in 2013 I was the co-deputy curator of Portable Nation. Disappearance as work in Progress – Approaches to Ecological Romanticism the Maldives Pavilion at 55th International Art Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia.

In 2011; I curated Cities group show at Torrance Art Museum, in the south Bay of Los Angeles. 

From 2010 to 2013 I was a lecturer and art-science consultant at the ISWA. The European Project Immersion in Scientific Word Through Arts who was coordinated by UnivpM.

I have curated an innovative European program focusing on contemporary culture through a combination of visual arts, new media, technology, and science. Two of the exhibitions curated have been Before the Crash at the Exeter Museum (England), and the group show After the Crash at the Botanical Garden Museum of Roma, including artists Trevor Paglen, Ravi Agarwal, Donato Piccolo, and Justine Cooper.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?

Los Angeles, and in general all the California, is so gorgeous. I learned the exhibition’s history, introducing art from the angle of exhibitions – their philosophical underpinnings and their impact on the vision and administration of new spaces and institutions. I think that Los Angeles, and California, are vital for introducing art. I dedicated a publication to this geographical majestic place: As Brilliant As the Sun published by Vanilla edizioni. “As Brilliant As the Sun” reconstructs a journey into the artistic practices of California and around in the city of Rome, creating a hybrid cartography through a vision of expanded art geography marked by analogies and contradictions.

The sun, the special light, the relationship with space, their distance from a purely commercial art system, their common search for spirituality, the attention to experimentation have allowed some individual artists, galleries, and art centers to find an ideal context to shape new and alternative models of artistic production and presentation. More affordable locations and a mix of urban city life and serene beach/dolce vita life have attracted visual artists to these geographically distant but intrinsically close places to create their work. Many artists in California and in Roma consider themselves both artists and activists, not as separate but as intertwined realities. Collective action is and has always been extremely important in California, specifically amongst marginalized groups – whether it be in relation to disability, gender, sexuality, race, class, or the intersections amongst these communities. The volume investigates the efforts made to consolidate the aesthetical structures by focusing on the projects of the artists in which they are highlighted: focal points are then the intersectional feminist perspective, social and political issues, activism, the diaspora, the relationship with the landscape, the change in progress, conflicts related to identity issues and the ethics of ecology.

For me; the art places to visit are many, I can synthesis with different kinds of art spaces. The first is Durden and Ray, which concentrates on small, tightly curated group shows at the gallery, organized by the members, and hosts international artists as part of a commitment to global exchange and alternative networks. The Durden and Ray model expressly overlaps multiple strategies, including the commercial potential and visual identity of a gallery, the democratic structure of an artist group, the potential to create collaborative works of art in the manner of a collective.

I adore the LACMA Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Getty Center, Getty Villa, TAM – Torrance Art Museum, the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, and Hammer Museum. A special iconic place is Osservatorio Griffith. A great moment is during Frieze Los Angeles, which generates a platform, not only for collectors,  of Self-Reflection and start conversations between people.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
I want to dedicate my shoutout to Fabrizio Orsini, and the AAC Platform; and I want to give thanks to the Los Angeles art community to introduce me many years ago.

Website: http://www.camillaboemio.com/

Instagram: @camillaboemio

Linkedin: Camilla Boemio

Twitter: @CamillaBoemio

Facebook: Camilla Boemio

Other: Blog http://aniconics.wordpress.com

Image Credits
Photos realized from AAC Platform.

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