Lin May Saeed

Metamorphoses

“What if we could be a flower?” asks Chus Martínez, curator for Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea of Metamorphoses: Let Everything Happen to You.

The exhibition focuses on the notion of transformation in the technological era through contemporary artworks by Nicanor Aráoz (Buenos Aires, 1980), Ingela Ihrman (Strängnäs, 1985), Alexa Karolinski (Berlin, 1984) and Ingo Niermann (Bielefeld, 1969), Eduardo Navarro (Buenos Aires, 1979), Reto Pulfer (Bern, 1981), Mathilde Rosier (Paris, 1973), Lin May Saeed (Würzburg, 1973), and Ania Soliman (Warsaw, 1970).

Alongside their projects, the exhibition also includes I Have Left You the Mountain, curated by Simon Battisti, Leah Whitman-Salkin and Åbäke. All the artists in this exhibition share an interest in transformation and a heterogeneous style. All their works possess a sense of organic life and an interest in nature. But how are nature and metamorphosis entangled? And why is it so important today to distinguish the old modern idea of “change” from the contemporary notion of “transformation”? What is an art interested in joyfully contesting conventional de nitions of ontology like? To Martínez, the word “nature” identifies a total revolution that is overturning the way we interact with organic and inorganic forms, and transforming how we think of gender, reproduction, power, and life. Produced on the occasion of the exhibition, this richly illustrated catalog presents a selection of the curator’s critical writings on the subject.