NEW COLLABORATION BETWEEN THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL PARK OF POMPEII AND LONDON’S SERPENTINE, WITH ARTISTS TAI SHANI, ALEXANDRA DAISY GINSBERG AND TABITA REZAIRE

The Archaeological Park of Pompeii and London’s Serpentine have teamed up in a new collaboration between the two institutions.

In the context of Pompeii’s first contemporary art programme, Pompeii Commitment. Archaeological Matters, they haveinvited three artists involved in the Serpentine’s Back to Earth programme to share their insights and ongoing research materials which all intersect with questions connected to archaeology, archaeobotany and archaeozoology. These three projects-in-progress will be jointly published both on www.pompeiicommitment.org and www.serpentinegalleries.org/whats-on/back-to-earth

The first presentation, to be released on 11 February, is by artist Tai Shani (London, 1976) who developed avideo in dialogue with Serpentine’s General Ecology Curator, Lucia Pietroiusti. Part of a larger research project commissioned by Manchester International Festival with British Art Show, and developed in collaboration with the Serpentine, Untitled Hieroglyphsis a visual response to their conversation exploring some of the ideas in Shani’s forthcoming project The Neon Hieroglyph, which weaves together a series of poetic considerations on a feminist history of Ergot, a fungus that grows on rye and other common grains from which the hallucinogenic drug LSD is derived.

For the second release, on 18 February, artist Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg (London, 1982) and Serpentine Exhibition Curator Rebecca Lewin discuss Ginsberg’s ongoing research into biodiversity loss and pollinator decline, which will soon culminate in a new outdoor installation commissioned by the Eden Project in Cornwall - a living artwork printed in flowers, which is made for pollinators and not about them.

The third and final publication on 25 February will feature a special, week-long online screening of Tabita
Rezaire’s (Paris, 1989) video MamellesAncestrales (2019) – an artwork which weaves togetherarchaeologicalresearch methodologies, scientific explorations and spiritual wisdoms – accompanied by a newly commissioned text by art critic and curator OulimataGueye, whose research studies digital technology and science fiction through the African continent.

Pompeii Commitment. Archaeological Matters has been conceived by Massimo Osanna and Andrea Viliani, who maintains it with Stella Bottai (Curator) and Laura Mariano (Project Manager). In its initial phase, between December 2020 and December 2021, Pompeii Commitmentwill focus on defining the forms of real as well as potential knowledge which is, or could be,expressed and produced by the Pompeiian archaeological matters, via a collective research method activated by artists, curators, writers, activists and archaeologists, and shared on its web portal/digital research centrepompeiicommitment.org.

Back to Earth is the Serpentine’s multi-year project that invites over sixty leading artists, architects, poets, filmmakers, scientists, thinkers and designers, to devise artist-led campaigns, protocols and initiatives responding to the environmental crisis, with the support of partner organisations and networks. Interdisciplinary at its very core, Back to Earth manifests throughout all of the Galleries’ programmes onsite, offsite and online, sharing its resources to amplify ongoing projects or campaigns, or develop new ones.Back to Earth is curated and produced by Rebecca Lewin, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Jo Paton, Lucia Pietroiusti, Holly Shuttleworth and Kostas Stasinopoulos.