Residere
Solo exhibition by Mauro Campagnaro curated by ife collective
01-24.07.2022
Marano Vicentino Railway Station (VI)
Having a fixed dwelling, staying in one place, are foundational acts of our species' civilizations. The sedentary nature implicit in the practice of cultivation made this possible. Not by chance, "culture" derives from the Latin colere, meaning to cultivate, to take care of, to honor. And since agricultural activity requires staying in one place, culture also means inhabiting. Residere.
But reside is also residue, a space abandoned by humans, like the one Mauro Campagnaro traverses between July 2020 and September 2021, a context in which the transformative power of vegetation creates a territory of planetary blending.
Residere *To reside* is a laboratory of the human-nature relationship, where knowledge is followed by the search for collaboration with nature's inventive power, at the intersection of unexpected encounters. To change, starting from the findings on the ground and blending them with our knowledge. If the problem is to decipher the relationships between creatures, "inhabiting" becomes the metaphor for defining a shift. "Is it possible to establish a shared territory? Will the animals accept my presence?" In the attempt to find answers, the artist walks through the vast reserve where he positions a Digital Scouting Camera for months, capturing the mutations of species, to tell the stories of the co-inhabitants of the place.
The world is a complex fabric of events, a combinatory act that determines the structure of the whole. Thus, species together, both living and non-living, become part of a system. Each species is a chimera whose evolution always takes place in becoming with the others, in a sacred ecological paradigm.
Photos by Marta Braggio
