Sarah Lucas. Innamemorabiliamumbum

Sarah Lucas. Innamemorabiliamumbum

Albergo Diurno Venice – piazza Oberdan, Milan
8 – 10 April 2016

The Fondazione Nicola Trussardi and miart, in partnership with FAI and the City of Milan, have invited the celebrated English artist Sarah Lucas to create a project specifically conceived for the magnificent spaces of the underground baths designed in the early 1920s by architect Piero Portaluppi, which have been closed to the public since 2006 and were recently reopened for a few days through the initiative of FAI.
Inside this temple of beauty and personal care, sculptures, installations, sound works and other projects are centered on the theme of the body, its depiction, its history, and the stereotypes in which it is frequently cloaked. All the more bitingly irreverent for their disarming simplicity, the works of Sarah Lucas create a theater of ambiguity where seemingly commonplace materials become objects of affection that reveal suppressed urges and desires. From the beginning of her career, when she emerged among the Young British Artists of the 1990s London scene, Lucas has mocked taboos and sexist attitudes through coarsely aggressive sculptures. Lucas’s entire oeuvre is a reflection on the body, its depiction and its desires. Caring for one’s body, experiencing anatomy as beauty and as trauma, are recurrent themes in this British artist’s vision: the Albergo Diurno Venezia is therefore the perfect setting for a game of mirrors that links her artworks to the architecture and history of one of the most evocative landmarks in the everyday life of twentieth-century Milan.

For miart 2016, the Fondazione Nicola Trussardi and miart present Sarah Lucas –INNAMEMORABILIAMUMBUM, a special project by renowned British artist Sarah Lucas (b. 1962, London), curated by Massimiliano Gioni and Vincenzo de Bellis.

Sarah Lucas creates a site-specific work designed for the Albergo Diurno Venezia. This temple of beauty and personal care is brought to life by sculptures, installations, sound works and other projects, for three days of exhibitions, performances and live happenings centered on the theme of the body, its depiction, its history, and the stereotypes in which it is frequently cloaked.

All the more bitingly irreverent for their disarming simplicity, the works of Sarah Lucas—photographs, collages, sculptures and drawings—create a theater of ambiguity where seemingly commonplace materials become objects of affection that reveal suppressed urges and desires.
From the beginning of her career, when she emerged among the Young British Artists of the 1990s London scene, Lucas has mocked taboos and sexist attitudes through coarsely aggressive sculptures. Her self-portraits, in which her own image becomes a character that moves through dozens of photographs, poses and situations, act out male and female myths and clichés, transforming gender roles. “I like to play around with gender stereotypes […] all these meanings are constructs, and they’re quite fragile” the artist says. In Sarah Lucas’s world, no subject seems too delicate and no taboo too sacred.

Lucas’s entire oeuvre is a reflection on the body, its depiction and its desires. Caring for one’s body, experiencing anatomy as beauty and as trauma, are recurrent themes in this British artist’s vision: the Albergo Diurno Venezia—an underground world, so fascinating yet so disquieting—is therefore the perfect setting for one of her site-specific projects, in a game of mirrors that links her artworks to the architecture and history of one of the most evocative landmarks in the everyday life of twentieth-century Milan.

The Albergo Diurno Venezia, whose design is attributed to Piero Portaluppi, has been built by the City of Milan between 1923 and 1925, and officially opened on January 18, 1926.In addition to public baths and grooming services (barber, hairdresser, manicurist, pedicurist), the Albergo Diurno also offered a post office, bureau de change, telephones, baggage check, travel agency, bank, typing bureau, laundry and ironing, and shops for buying clothes or renting personal objects. It also had a cutting-edge audio system that played radio throughout the salon. After a series of renovations, with the originally envisioned services gradually shutting down, the Albergo Diurno Venezia definitively closed to the public in 2006. After interest in the space was expressed on various sides, in May 2015 FAI signed an agreement with the City of Milan to develop and fund a restoration project, in view of reopening the facility to the public.

Sarah Lucas was born in 1962 in London, where she still lives and works. After studying at the Working Men’s College (1982–83), the London College of Printing (1983–84) and Goldsmiths College (1984–87) she became a leading figure in the generation that came to the fore in 1990s London, known as the Young British Artists (YBA).
Lucas made her debut in the famous group show Freeze (London, 1988), organized by Damian Hirst with other students from Goldsmiths College, and in 1992 had her first solo show in London. In 1993, with fellow artist Tracey Emin, she founded The Shop, a store for multiples and artworks that remained open for six months on Bethnal Green Road, London. In 1997 she debuted at the Royal Academy in London with the group show Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection. Her sculptures, installations and photographs have been exhibited in many solo shows, including Florian and Kevin, Aspen Art Museum, Colorado (2015); Sarah Lucas: Situation Absolute Beach Man Rubble, Whitechapel, London, (2013); Lucas-Bosch-Gelatin, Kunsthalle Krems, Austria (2011); Nuds Cycladic, Museum of Cycladic Art, Athens (2010); In-A-Gadda Da-Vidda, Tate Britain, London (2004); Sarah Lucas, Tate Modern, London (2002), The Pleasure Principle, Freud Museum, London (2000). Her work has also been featured in group exhibitions at some of the world’s leading museums, including the Royal Academy of Arts in London (2015); the Museum of Art in Kochi (2014); the New Museum in New York (2013); the Palais de Tokyo in Paris (2010); the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles (2009); the Serpentine Gallery in London (2006); Kunsthaus Dresden (2004); the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin (1998); and the Museum of Modern Art in Paris (1996).
In 2015, Sarah Lucas represented Great Britain at the 56th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, with the show I SCREAM DADDIO.

Sarah Lucas – INNAMEMORABILIAMUMBUM is a project conceived and produced by the Fondazione Nicola Trussardi and miart, in partnership with FAI – Fondo Ambiente Italiano and Comune di Milano, for the twenty-first edition of the art fair. With this project the Fondazione Nicola Trussardi and miart continue a partnership that began in 2013 with the project Liberi Tuttiand in 2014 with Cine Dreams.