title: The wooden goose
artist: Maria Elisa D’Andrea
curated by: Camilla Boemio with AAC Platform
materials: window, wooden goose.
dimensions: 140 x 80 cm
location: via Venezuela, Udine - Italy
The wooden goose is the first gift from my kids. They bought it in a small country fair. The man
who made it has written on it “W la mamma” with a black marker, but day by day the writing has
disappeared.
Now the goose is not a banal wooden goose, but it is something loaded by relevance, because of the sincerity and purity of two little children: they just wanted to give something.
That’s why this goose became a sort of home protector.
This is the reason why I thought to the Greek goddess Estia, the guardian of fire and fireplace. Estia
was also the guardian of images, and she was one of the few goddesses without image.
So this is another votive practice, another prayer. Because there is life where there is fire, and there
is fire where there is someone who guards it, someone who feeds the fire creating relevance in
everyday things.
More on Maria Elisa D’Andrea's practice
Maria Elisa D’Andrea presents a site-specific work for the pop-up show. The form, the narrative
and the meaning are traced in this work through the various states of formal and allegorical
existence. Each drawing or painting on paper, like her textiles artworks, is the result of highly
virtuosic techniques that often require extended periods of time (and patience) to execute. The
works arise from personal experiences, visions, and sensations that lead to iconic images and
embodied reflections on feminist symbology; each is like an amulet charged with devotional fervor.
As Boemio describes, “They are spare and precise fantasies, driven by inner necessity, and involve
inquiries into anthropological subjects, both alluring and disturbing. The intense material focus is
part to pursue that direction”
D’Andrea has exhibited in solo show and group show including: la Biennale Italia – Cina in Turin; INDEPENDENTS5 with AAC Platform at Verona Art Fair in 2014; Pinacoteca Moretti in San Severino Marche; Museo Civico Sant’Antonio in Cascia in 2015.
“Nel Cerchio della Madre” publication curated by AAC Platform with Narcissus editor presents his
research and documents “Nel Cerchio della Madre” exhibition. In 2013; she won the Premio Arte
Laguna in “Open” exhibition, in Venezia.
More on Camilla Boemio's practice
Camilla Boemio is a writer, curator, university consultant and theorist whose practice deals with
investigating the politics of participation in curatorial practices, the intersection of culture and
contemporary aesthetics. She is a member of AICA (International Association of Arts Critics). She
co-founded with Fabrizio Orsini the experimental nomadic non-profit AAC Platform; in many
years of research they expanded several collaborations in California and in Great Britain.
Her work, also with AAC Platform, focuses on interdisciplinary systems from an intersectional
feminist perspective, with a focus on the social systems and other ecologies. Her recent curatorial
projects include the exhibition Jérôme Chazeix: The coat of hipness (materiali velati) part
Altaroma2020 agenda at Label201 (2020); the Arts Council England project in which support the Marina Moreno’s research (2019-2020), the solo show Marc Trujillo: Fast at AOCF58 – Galleria Bruno Lisi, in Roma (2020). Her book As Brilliant As the Sun was published by Vanilla Edizioni in 2020.
In 2016, she was the curator of Diminished Capacity the first Nigerian Pavilion at the 15th
International Architecture Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia; and in 2013 she was the co-
deputy curator of Portable Nation. Disappearance as work in Progress – Approaches to Ecological
Romanticism the Maldives Pavilion at 55th International Art Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia. For more information visit camillaboemio.com. Follow her on Instagram:@camillaboemio
AAC Platform (est. 2007) is an independent, non-profit nomadic gallery in Rome, devoted to the
commissioning and production of new work by local and international artists.
Window installation: The wooden goose by Maria Elisa D’Andrea
Curated by AAC Platform with Camilla Boemio (click arrow for more images)