Sursum corda è il tentativo di porre uno sguardo sulla realtà per farsi esperienza del reale.
Sursum corda vuole essere strumento per riflettere sullo spazio, sul tempo, sul luogo che intercorre tra lo spettatore e l’opera, tra me e l’altro.
Sursum corda è momento e spazio nel quale tra fruitore e opera si crea uno speciale rapporto, una conoscenza interiore, una possibilità d’interpretazione.
Sursum corda è l’opera che interagisce con il pubblico, con l’ambiente e con l’altro e che attraverso tale condivisione raggiunge il suo senso e la sua completezza.
Sursum corda è il dispositivo, l’opera, che cerca di attivare la coscienza critica individuale e collettiva > Maria Elisabetta Novello

Galleria Fumagalli presents Sursum corda, solo exhibition and live action by Maria Elisabetta Novello, in collaboration with dancers Roberto Cocconi and Luca Zampar. The research of Maria Elisabetta Novello, characterized in particular by the use of ash with which the artist realizes forms and traces from memory, embraces an ephemeral and fleeting element that carries the fragility of the contemporary, the beauty and the instability of the existence itself.

The artwork is conceived as a social interstice and as an instrument to affirm the artist’s presence, which occupies the world with the same urgency and commitment of the individual belonging to this universe. Maria Elisabetta Novello acts with essential and precarious signs on elements of private and public memory, anthropological, social and relational. She collects this material returning it silent and crossed by a responsible action, with a new identity and a new image. Sursum corda is a project stemming from the artist’s interest for border areas (thresholds and limits) and the ambivalence that these presuppose in marking a transition. There is always a relationship with what’s on the other side, and a meeting point is also a point of detachment that simultaneously divides and unites. With Sursum corda Maria Elisabetta Novello wants to open a dialogue between the two sides, starting from the awareness of the human being and of the fundamental actions that keep him alive: the breath, the heartbeat and the emotions. Sursum corda will be inaugurated on January 19 with a live action of Maria Elisabetta Novello, in collaboration with the dancers Roberto Cocconi and Luca Zampar, also repeated on 20 and 21 January. In the following days, the video of the action will be screened at the gallery, which will become container of memories, also welcoming the documentation material of the project, the process and the action. On display sheets, proofs, a photographic series, archival material collected and stored during the long phase of preparation of the event between sounds, noises, sound tracks, auscultation tones, notes that trace movements and rhythms, finds, scientific boards, images that bring to the same conceptual and emotional temperature of Sursum Corda.

Maria Elisabetta Novello born in 1974 in Vicenza and studied at the Fine Arts Academy in Venice with a thesis on Painting. Lives and works in Udine. She has exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions, in public and privates spaces, both in Italy and abroad. It is worth mentioning her most important and recent participations: 16° Quadriennale d’Arte, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome, 2016; Casa Cavazzini Museo d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Udine, 2015; VI edizione Premio della Fondazione VAF, Palazzo Della Penna, Perugia, 2014; Italian Embassy in Brussels, 2013; Museo Civico G. Fattori ex Granai Villa Mimbelli, Livorno, 2012; San Fedele, Milano, 2010.
Compagnia Arearea, founded by Roberto Cocconi in 1992, has always been open to the arrival of new dancers and artists specialized in other disciplines. It is now led by a stable artistic nucleus formed by Marta Bevilacqua, Roberto Cocconi, Valentina Saggin and Luca Zampar. The company’s creations are articulated in the double dimension of theater production and performance in daily life and space.

View press release →

exibart.com

24 February 2017
“Maria Elisabetta Novello, Sursum Corda. Galleria Fumagalli, Milano”

Read article  →

askanews.it

23 January 2017
“Batte il cuore dell’arte: un’azione di Maria Elisabetta Novello”

Read article  →