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Valentina Furian - Centauro, 2023 - Garage, Pontives

Valentina Furian, Centauro, 2023. HD Video, Color, Stereo Sound. Courtesy the Artist and Fundación PROA. Photo by Tiberio Sorvillo

Valentina Furian makes use of film, performance and photography to investigate the relationship between reality and fiction, humanity and nature as well as interspecies relationships, especially those with animals. In her films, she dwells in particular on the process of domestication of the animals that are the protagonists of her moving images, on the one hand recounting the abandonment of the wilderness, and on the other the assertion of human dominance over nature. In her video 55 (2019), for instance, the artist aims her lens at a dog barking and growling at something burning off screen. Thanks to the light of the flames, we can make out the white fangs of the animal, distressed by fire – a key human tool – and its desperate and incessant barking places the viewer in the same state of anguish.

Produced in Buenos Aires with the support of Fundación PROA and presented for the first time at The Parliament of Marmots, the video on show focuses on the mythological figure of the centaur: a creature that hybridises the body of a horse with the torso of a human being. The camera lens focuses on the nervous, restrained movements of the tamed animal: its muscles clench and its joints flex. The screen, suspended from the ground, allows viewing from both sides, thus including the audience in the image and making them part of the hybrid state, between reality and fiction, between the human and the animal. The statuesque, out-of-scale body of the animal becomes an abstraction, an epidermal landscape, a moving mountain that floats without ever resting on the ground. (M.P.)

VALENTINA FURIAN

Valentina Furian (1989, Venice, Italy) works mainly with moving images and time-based installations. Her cinematographic approach is a hybrid between documentary experimentation and narrative fiction. In 2024 she won the New York Prize with ISCP - International Studio & Curatorial Program, New York. In 2023 she was artist in residency at Proa21, PROA Foundation, Buenos Aires in collaboration with GAMeC, Bergamo and she was selected for the project Nuovo Forno del Pane with MAMbo, Bologna. Over the years she worked with institutional and experimental spaces such as MAXXI, Rome; Pearl Art Museum, Shanghai; Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin, IIC Paris; Sunaparanta Center for Contemporary Art Goa, IIC Mumbai; MUSE, Trento; The Blank Contemporary Art, Bergamo; CareOf, Fondazione Stelline, and ViaFarini, Milan; Bevilacqua la Masa Foundation and Microclima, Venice; and Cinema Visionario, Udine.

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Valentina Furian - Centauro, 2023 - Garage, Pontives

Valentina Furian, Centauro, 2023. HD Video, Color, Stereo Sound. Courtesy the Artist and Fundación PROA. Photo by Tiberio Sorvillo

Valentina Furian makes use of film, performance and photography to investigate the relationship between reality and fiction, humanity and nature as well as interspecies relationships, especially those with animals. In her films, she dwells in particular on the process of domestication of the animals that are the protagonists of her moving images, on the one hand recounting the abandonment of the wilderness, and on the other the assertion of human dominance over nature. In her video 55 (2019), for instance, the artist aims her lens at a dog barking and growling at something burning off screen. Thanks to the light of the flames, we can make out the white fangs of the animal, distressed by fire – a key human tool – and its desperate and incessant barking places the viewer in the same state of anguish.

Produced in Buenos Aires with the support of Fundación PROA and presented for the first time at The Parliament of Marmots, the video on show focuses on the mythological figure of the centaur: a creature that hybridises the body of a horse with the torso of a human being. The camera lens focuses on the nervous, restrained movements of the tamed animal: its muscles clench and its joints flex. The screen, suspended from the ground, allows viewing from both sides, thus including the audience in the image and making them part of the hybrid state, between reality and fiction, between the human and the animal. The statuesque, out-of-scale body of the animal becomes an abstraction, an epidermal landscape, a moving mountain that floats without ever resting on the ground. (M.P.)

VALENTINA FURIAN

Valentina Furian (1989, Venice, Italy) works mainly with moving images and time-based installations. Her cinematographic approach is a hybrid between documentary experimentation and narrative fiction. In 2024 she won the New York Prize with ISCP - International Studio & Curatorial Program, New York. In 2023 she was artist in residency at Proa21, PROA Foundation, Buenos Aires in collaboration with GAMeC, Bergamo and she was selected for the project Nuovo Forno del Pane with MAMbo, Bologna. Over the years she worked with institutional and experimental spaces such as MAXXI, Rome; Pearl Art Museum, Shanghai; Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin, IIC Paris; Sunaparanta Center for Contemporary Art Goa, IIC Mumbai; MUSE, Trento; The Blank Contemporary Art, Bergamo; CareOf, Fondazione Stelline, and ViaFarini, Milan; Bevilacqua la Masa Foundation and Microclima, Venice; and Cinema Visionario, Udine.