CURA. turns 15 and celebrates this important milestone with We Monsters, a special "horror" issue dedicated to the exploration of the revolutionary role of monsters in modern civilization. Through a wide series of monstrous figures, beast-like characters, aberrations, masks and figures, human and animal hybrids, nightmares, and chimeras, the new issue of CURA. investigates artists' interest in weird life forms produced by the imagination, and the dismantling of a fictive idea of normality and its divisive categorizations. In a world that hides monstrosity behind "otherness," monsters thus reveal a dynamic, varied, multifaced, transformative universe.
The new issue of the magazine thus presents new artists commissions, special projects, visual essays, texts, and conversations about the attractive and bumper world of the alterity, that delves into the dark side of consciousness and brings us into the hidden folds of the human being. New monstrous figures have been created for the occasion of CURA. 42, thanks to the cover commissions of Marianna Simnett and Charlie Fox. If Marianna Simnett goes through her most iconic and recent works, premiering her latest production of WINNER, Charlie Fox gifts us a visual selection of his favorite monsters, featuring artworks, movies, celebs and graphic novels.
Will Benedict also scrolls the most monstrous figures of his work for the third cover of the issue and offers a preview of the new character created with Steffen Jørgensen for the third season of The Restaurant. Furthermore, a Monsters zine designed by Will Benedict himself features a wide archive of monsters in art history, comics, found images and old magazines.
There is no escape from monsters! Alex Da Corte's polyhedral transformations are described by Travis Diehl;
Monster Chetwynd's self-determination as a "monster" is narrated by a text by Jessica Ramm;
Ambera Wellmann's monstrous plasticity is described by Natalia Sielewicz; Ivana Bašić's new work premiere is accompanied by a conversation with Margot Norton, while Sibylle Ruppert's dark art is introduced by Ben Broome.
A special project by Jon Rafman introduces us to a suggestive cavalcade of monstrous AI characters taken from his new video game S.S. Lacuna: Cloutbomb. Special commissions selected by DISare allocated to Ada O'Higgins, alias Ada Antoinette, Rafael Amadeo Foster, and Evan Eisel, with their Incest Movie Night and to the independent game studio Softethix with their new videogame.
Lastly, The New Now section sheds new light on the work of
Darja Bajagić, introduced by Ana Simona Zelenović;
Sandra Mujinga, introduced by Zoë Hopkins; Josèfa Ntjam, presented by Martha Kirszenbaum; Mary-Audrey Ramirez, with a text by Adriana Blidaru, and King Cobra, presented by Sir Jacobs.
Who is a monster? We are all monsters as we use to see in the others the monster that lurks within us.
This issue comes with three different covers, randomly distributed.
Cura.magazine is a platform for contemporary art based in Rome that investigates with an independent spirit today's artistic production, art's emerging scene and the borders that have marked its central moments, through collaborations with international artists and curators, who live in different areas of the world. It has a production of three issues per year.
The platform is also an editorial structure (Cura.books), publishing a series of artist's books (see the
corresponding page in the publishers section).
