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Il progetto di residenza artistica di Claudia Maina, svoltosi nel mese di luglio, si inserisce nell’ambito della rassegna Il Taccuino del Marziano (dal fortunato titolo di uno scritto di Ennio Flaiano, paradossale e arguto vademecum di sopravvivenza sociale sulla Terra visto da un alieno), promossa da Officina Con_Temporanea per la Residenza Luoghi Comuni San Salvario, grazie al contributo di Fondazione CRT e della Città di Torino.  La rassegna promuove eventi che, attraverso i codici della creatività, stimolino la partecipazione attiva degli abitanti della residenza e del quartiere in interazione con gli artisti (alcuni di essi chiamati a condividerne anche l’esperienza abitativa, come in questo caso), ponendo l’attenzione sul tema dell’alterità e della condivisione, guardando alle differenze come risorsa e non limite, come apertura e scoperta di un comune sentire. [...]

Byung-Chul Han opens his text with a beautiful phrase by Peter Handke: “I live by what others ignore about me”. Hermetic architectures made of glass, wooden miniatures of little bugs-like men in which the artist has recently added feathers – to give some respite, he says; an assemblage of installations that follows a vertical movement, made from modules different by type and size, whose aesthetic component is very powerful. [...]

Claudia Maina is a silent artist. Her work proceeds by accumulations, allowing little space to the word. Starting from the first sculptures in terracotta: Azione (Action), Il compatto (The compact), Camminano (they walk) (2001). In these existential mini-theatres men advance in one direction only. The surface is flat and uniform; there are no clues or signals available to guide them. Everyone proceeds alone, reducing the exchanges of communication to pure gestures, as a handshake or the casual sharing of a moment of rest. For the majority of the time though, the state of solitude forces the man to face his own identity. [...]

Claudia Maina, just as an expert and audacious tightrope walker, works in balance between the borders of arts, working with the electronic image to realize mono-channel videos and installations that reflect on the subtle fabrics, the intimate aspects, the fractures and the hesitations of life. Between performance and sculpture, electronic arts, music and painting: the spectrum of disciplines that compose the deeper layer of her artistic experience shape the images of her works at a level which is both conceptual and structural, with a poetic innocence that is completely directed towards a feminine universe [...]

On February the 2nd 2006, at corso Cavallotti 11 (Novara, Itlay) Nac proposes a solo show by the young artist from the city of Novara Claudia Maina, in line with the valorisation and greater visibility given to the emergent creative personalities of the territory, that has counted since 2003 the presence of Federico Ambiel, Barbara Fragola Degli Esposti, Alessandro Roma, Marco Currò and Roberto Palermo. In the invitation to interpret our exposition spaces, the young artist has organised a path of environmental literature developed in following rooms accompanying the spectator inside her complex and original system of visual research, space of mental and formal elaboration, shifting constantly between permeable linguistic borders of sculpture, installation, graphic project as well as video.[...]