Abitare una casa
A conversation with Nina Bassoli and Andrea Grotto
September 6, 2023
Between May and September 2023, Andrea Grotto‘s Casabase exhibition at Nashira Gallery and Home Sweet Home at Milano Triennale, curated by Nina Bassoli, were dedicated to the theme of home, which is as commonplace as it is wide-ranging.
For the occasion, on September 6th, 2023, Nashira Gallery organized a talk between Grotto and Bassoli as the finissage of their exhibitions, which generated a dialogue on the macro subject of ‘living in a house’, approached from the different perspectives of the two interlocutors.
People have always talked about houses: in interior design magazines, in architecture studios, in parlors talks. In recent years, the debate has been addressed with even greater frequency due to the pandemic and the special condition that has forced us to spend most of our time within the home.
Thus, the debate has shifted more towards the connection between the place where we live and our psychological well-being: topics have been touched on the way in which the décor, the colors of the walls and the cut of the light in a room can affect mood and the importance of the relationships created within a space.
Both exhibitions have focused their attention on the concept of home as an intimate, personal and sentimental dimension, a personal space that becomes a shelter for those who live in it and that is in a state of perpetual transformation – regardless of the specific living condition – evolving in parallel with one’s own existence.
In Casabase Andrea Grotto has expressed his point of view as an artist who, using a variety of materials with great familiarity—plasterboard, first and foremost, but also textiles, ceramics, wood—transforms the worlds he sees within his home into works of art. Grotto has used his grandmother’s centerpieces, his mother’s jumper designs, his quilt weaving into his creations, using them as sources of inspiration and illuminating the relationship between memory, space, and love.
On the other hand, the exhibition Home Sweet Home has presented the viewpoint of an architect who has aimed to depict living space as a tangible opportunity to restore a direct connection between our most genuine needs and the spaces that needed to be created.
The exhibition was organized into thematic sequences with site-specific installations and historical sections with photographic reproductions. The curator herself described the show as a “exhibition of exhibitions” because of the many levels it has explored.The exhibition has evolved as a tribute to the value and polysemantic meaning that the home takes on today.
On the occasion of the talk with Nina Bassoli and Andrea Grotto, the catalog of Andrea Grotto’s exhibition Casabase was presented.
Where: Nashira Gallery, via Vincenzo Monti 21, Milan
