Giuseppe Stampone

Mare Finito (Finished Sea) is the title of the two works by Giuseppe Stampone exhibited here. They belong to a series of works made in 2015 and focused on the means of transportation used by migrants on their journeys of hope to Europe. In a black vat, which precisely recreates a finite, oil-black sea, a toy boat, also black, floats in the becalmed waters. With this altered, miniature replica of reality, Stampone reflects on the means of crossing those invisible yet very tangible borders that separate Europe from other continents. Stampone highlights aspects such as reception, the notion of political borders and the multiple forms of control exercised over them. With an approach situated between the cynical and the poetic, he reflects on the idea of hospitality that Europe embodies, and on its evolution, from the sacred value of xenìa in ancient Greece to current forms of selective reception with respect to migrants’ origins.

Giuseppe Stampone (1974, Cluses, France), lives and works in Rome. He has had numerous solo exhibitions at Centro Italiano Arte Contemporanea – CIAC, Foligno (2018); Italian Cultural Institute, New Delhi (2016); GAMeC, Bergamo (2014), MACRO – Museo d’Arte Contemporanea di Roma, (2011). He has participated in group exhibitions at Biennial of Contemporary Art, Prizren, Kosovo (2019); Italian Cultural Institute, New York, (2017); MAXXI, Rome (2014). He has participated in numerous art exhibitions including the Cuban Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale d’Arte (2022), London Design Biennale (2021), South Korea Pavilion at the 17th Venice Biennale Architettura (2021), Seoul Architecture Biennale, (2017); Ostend Triennial, (2017); 56th Venice Biennale d’Arte, (2015); Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Kerala, (2012); 11th Havana Biennial, (2012); Liverpool Biennial, (2010); and 14th and 15th Quadriennale di Roma (2004–2008).