Rä di Martino 2011 - 2001

Poggibonsi: Carlo Cambi Editore, 2012. A cura di Busto A. Testo Italiano e Inglese. Poggibonsi, 2012; ril., pp. 132, ill. col., cm 22x24. In collaboration with the Regione Piemonte, the CRAA, the Associazione TAI and the Ettore Fico Foundation and Museum, Carlo Cambi Editore publishes this volume about the innovative Italian artist Rä di Martino, videomaker and photographer rising in the international cultural panorama. Her biography is errant and without roots, and so are all her characters, or more accurately the settings of her videos in which she sticks, as if on a theatrical backdrop, disorientated and lost figures. The presence of essays by many figures from the variegated world of Italian and international art critics (Chiara Bertola, Paola Nicolin, Lorenzo Benedetti, Stefano Chiodi, Luca Lo Pinto, Elena Volpato, Athena Panni, Stephen Campbell Moore, Luigi Fassi, Cecilia Alemani, Christopher Y. Lew, Manuel Saiz) offered a different analytical understanding of Rä di Martino?s art. Everything began with the Ettore Fico Foundation?s far-sighted desire not only to assign a prize to a young artist every year, but to extend this gesture by supporting the production of a work, an exhibition or, as in this case, a monographic volume. At this historical moment, in which figurative art has a fundamental importance for a generation?s growth and the affirmation and historical identity of a nation, making choices is important to stimulate artists to find their place in an ever more international context. Rä di Martino corresponds to these expectations and the intellectuals who contributed to this work represent a new cultural force for the world of art.