Marinella Senatore (Cava de' Tirreni, Italy, 1977) is a multidisciplinary artist, trained in music, fine arts and cinema. Her practice is characterised by a strong collective and participatory dimension; her work fuses together forms of resistance and local dialects with popular culture, dance, music, mass events and activism. Through various moments of encounter, Senatore reconsiders the political nature of collective formations and offers the public an opportunity to generate social change.
Read MoreHer works and performances have been exhibited and commissioned by Italian and international institutions, including: Kunsthaus Zurich; MAXXI Museum; Palais de Tokyo; Schirn Kunsthalle; Museum of Contemporary Art of Chicago; High Line, NY; Berlinische Galerie; Kunsthalle Sankt Gallen; Faena Art Forum; Bozar, BXL; Petach Tikva Museum; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo; Serpentine Gallery; CCA Tel Aviv; Museo Madre; Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal; ICA, Richmond; BAK Utrecht; Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo; Palazzo Grassi; Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum; Moderna Museet. The artist has also participated in the following contemporary art biennials: São Paulo Biennale; Venice Biennale; Lyon Biennale; Thessaloniki Biennale; Liverpool Biennale; Athens Biennale; Havana Biennale; Gothenburg Biennale; Cuenca Biennale and Bangkok Biennale.
In 2012, Marinella Senatore created The School of Narrative Dance (SOND), a nomadic, free and itinerant school that proposes an alternative educational system based on emancipation, inclusion and self-education. The school takes different forms, adapting to the space that hosts it and it has been active in Italy and abroad (including Berlin, Paris and New York). The Rosas project, launched the same year, represents the largest participatory project carried out in an urban context through the involvement of different institutions in three different countries: Germany, the United Kingdom and Italy. Senatore places social connections at the foundations of her work and refines this approach by focusing her research on activation, exploring the capacity of art to initiate a process of individual emancipation. The artist declares: 'Dignity, empowerment and emancipation: artists carve out a precise role for themselves, that of activator of a mechanism (which is the work) whose aim is to produce a transforming force from the encounter of the elements included in it, until it reaches the spectator'.
Over the years, SOND has received numerous commissions including from Manifesta 12, Castello di Rivoli in 2013; MAXXI in Rome in 2014; Venice Art Biennale in 2015; Centre Pompidou in Paris, Hayward Gallery in London, Queens Museum in New York, Kunsthaus in Zurich, Shenzhen Bi-city Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture in 2017; Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice in 2018; and Magazzino Italian Art, New York in 2019. The same year coincides with the realisation of Bodies in Alliance / Politics of the Street, a project that takes its cue from the artist's reflections on the industry of bodies within today's social and political context.
Text courtesy Mazzoleni.