The documentation of a mountain path designed by artist Alex Cecchetti in Val Gardena (Bolzano, Italy) and a journey into more-than-human presences and ecologies.
Curated by Valerio Del Baglivo and exhibited for the first time at the 8th edition of the Biennale Gherdëina, Sentiero is a two-hour one-to-one walk-piece, the result of a year of performances, hikes, art, and conversations between Alex Cecchetti, his collaborators, and local people. Accompanied by twelve guides to places where there is little human presence and invited to experience and engage with their surroundings, visitors are led to reflect on their relationship with nature, ecological practices, and thoughts, and to use all their senses to fully immerse themselves in these intricate forests.
The volume opens with an introduction by Valerio Del Baglivo, who contextualizes the project within Cecchetti's practice. The second chapter Sentiero is a readaptation of the performance experience through text and images; this is followed by a conversation between the artist and Lucia Pietroiusti, co-curator of the 8th Biennale Gherdëina (together with Filipa Ramos), accompanied by landscape watercolors made by the artist for the occasion; the third chapter is a letter to the artist from Nina Tabassomi, director of the Taxispalais Kunsthalle Tirol, where the work was also exhibited; finally, it concludes with a text by philosopher Emanuele Coccia, who reflects on Cecchetti new art forms produced in collaboration with other species.
Artist, poet and choreographer, creator of performances and idiosyncratic objects, Alex Cecchetti (born 1977 in Terni, Italy, lives and works in Paris) has developed a unique practice, difficult to classify, that could be called art of avoidance: tactical and poetic, aesthetic and materialistic, its system leads to produce specific situations or objects that can exist both inside and outside the traditional exhibitions. It is in this double movement of representation and conceal that it's possible to inscribe his staging of invisible choreographies of hidden nudes and sleeping dancers. His work is focused in the construction of specific narratives that are experienced both mentally and physically by the audience.
