Platform : Giovanni Vetere

Seeking new forms of embodiment in nature, Vetere invites us to listen to our own potentialities of becoming the other, of becoming something else. The artist aims at bringing awareness to the idea that our bodies and the environment are inextricably linked. 

The sea remains a largely unknown realm where the limits of self-understanding and human concern are tested, acting as a (hydro)common space in which the imaginative encounter with the nonhuman is made possible. Finding inspiration in its uncertainty and flux, Vetere’s sculptures rise from the depths of an imaginative sea taking the form of still undiscovered organisms abound with life and colourful vitality. Deep sea mining, industrialised fishing and trawling are destroying habitats even before science has the chance to discover them. Are we able to extend an ethos of responsivity that expands to the depths of the sea, to creatures we haven’t discovered yet?

Two of the limited-edition photographs presented in the exhibition, on the other hand, are images of Vetere’s long-durational performances, Portrait of the Homo Aquaticus (2018) and Sometimes I think I should be more like a fish (2020). The performative installations foreground the notion that humans are inseparable from the natural environment, and that the natural environment is not a phenomena “in” which we live but rather is of us, in us and through us. The rain might be felt in an arthritic joint, the sun literally colours our skin, our body is an “atmosphere of flesh”.

How we live the world is contingent upon how we imagine the world to be. We need to cultivate an imaginary environment where our bodies and our time are mutually imbricated with our surroundings, that we must live as bodies that extend beyond the human condition.

Vetere was born in Rome in 1995 and now lives in London. They graduated from the Fine Arts program of Camberwell College of Arts in 2018. Although they began their journey with photography and sculpture, they now focus on performance as a means to explore relationship between humans and nature.

Vetere has exhibited in several cities in Europe, including Rome, Florence, The Hague and London. Their most recent projects include a two-person exhibition, titled Tides In The Body, at Lychee One in London and the performance Il Cappello del Polpo at Palazzo Massimo in Rome. In 2019 they were selected to be part of the Midwater Residency in collaboration with Studio Forlane on the island of Poros, Greece. In the same year they exhibited in the Ancient City of Cosa, Ansedonia, for the second chapter of HYPERMAREMMA, The Submerged City. In 2017 they were awarded the "Lorenzo Il Magnifico" prize at the Florence Biennale in the Performance Art category. In 2021 Vetere will participate in the first edition of the Komi biennial in collaboration with the Pushkin museum (Moscow, RU) and in the second edition of the contemporary art festival Back to Nature curated by Costantino d'Orazio in Villa Borghese, Rome.