As per tradition, Fondazione Furlan hosts the exhibition of the works of the winner of the last edition of the In Sesto Prize. Elisa Caldana, who was born in Pordenone, presents her Monumento alle vie inesistenti (Monument to the Nonexistent Streets, 2019), a sculpture conceived to give tangible form to the bureaucratic artifice used by the Italian administration to enable homeless people to access constitutionally recognized fundamental rights, such as healthcare, work, and voting. In the interweaving of matter, the virtual becomes real, creating a sculptural paradox. The work—a single line intertwined and closed in on itself—shows in relief a sample of "nonexistent" Italian street names.
At Fondazione Furlan, Elisa Caldana exhibits a selection of works from her creative corpus in which she analyses, from different points of view, the concept of "home" in its practical, ethical, social and metaphorical meaning and recalls current and urgent issues, such as the new forms of poverty and exclusion from the social fabric that characterise our globalized world. The artist—who has been living and working abroad for years—chooses to explore these themes right in her hometown, Pordenone, with all the symbolic and emotional value that this entails.
Architecture, urban spaces, collective identities and their social and political implications are recurring subjects in Elisa Caldana's works. The works presented at 'Casa Furlan' clearly express the artist's aesthetic research, conducted at the intersection of sculpture, performance, film and writing.
Elisa Caldana (1986) works primarily with sculpture, performance, film, and writing. Her works are united conceptually by the use of abstraction and imagination to draw attention to political and social issues, analysing the paradoxes and liminal spaces that generate from the coexistence of plural standpoints. Architecture, public spaces, monuments, and collective identity are recurrent themes within her work. Caldana studied at the Städelschule in Frankfurt, and received her BA and MFA in visual arts from IUAV University of Venice. Her work has been exhibited in presentations and exhibitions internationally.
