On the occasion of the 18th Contemporary Art Day, the Italian Cultural Institute in Copenhagen is hosting an exhibition by the Italian artist Rosy Rox, entitled “Agile fragile” and open to visitors until 4 November 2022. The exhibition includes photographs, videos and sculptures of projects carried out by the artist (Naples, 1976) over the past ten years. It unfolds along a diachronic path that highlights the artistic process which accompanied her research in the field of performance.
Fragility and resistance are the opposite and complementary poles within which Rosy Rox’s performative practice moves. Her practice is part of a long feminist tradition: from body art to participatory performance, with hidden political intent. In fact, her work focuses on issues related to female identity and, starting from her own experience, she illustrates her inner world and her desires, by using her body which turns into the object of aesthetic contemplation and philosophical reflection. This is how Rox cries out to the world about the rights of women who continue to carry the weight of discrimination or political and social constraints.
Her story also intertwines with that of Ovartaci, a Danish artist whose biographical and creative journey developed entirely within a psychiatric hospital. A deep sense of melancholy unites the poetics of the two artists, who are distant in terms of time, context and language, yet close in their attempt to overcome, through the generating power of creativity, the chains imposed by society, which are as metaphorical as they are real. Rosy Rox’s latest performance work, “With Open Eyes”, whose conceptual and iconographic universe intertwines with that of Ovartaci, is dedicated to – alleged – madness and the possibility of regeneration.
