Comunicato stampa | Press release

Matèria is pleased to inaugurate its new exhibition season at the gallery with American Dream, a special one-evening only performance and installation by Marilisa Cosello (Salerno 1978). The event, in partnership with Galleria Studio G7, follows Cosello’s award by Matèria at the 2022 Combat Prize.

Cosello’s performance - brought to life by a group of six skilled Roman-based performers - adds to her ongoing investigation into overarching economic, political and cultural structures of contemporary society; spurred by a dialogue initiated in the spring of 2022 with Noam Chomsky, renowned linguist, philosopher, historian and communication theorist, recognized as the founder of generative-transformational grammar. Chomsky grants Cosello the permission to use excerpts from his manifesto book "Requiem for the American Dream: The 10 Principles of Wealth & Power" (2017), a text that the artist unpacks and revisits within her practice, highlighting her multidisciplinary approach through the use of performance art, site specific interventions, video, sound and photography.

In her latest addition to American Dream, Marilisa Cosello structures performance and installation through the careful study and revisitation of Matèria’s space. Ranging from the gallery’s main exhibition room to its street-facing vitrine, Cosello blends her ongoing two-dimensional text based work referencing the aesthetics of protest, with an elaborate performance set to further develop the central themes that influence the narratives that shape our understanding of wealth, power, and the pursuit of happiness. Moreover, her work prompts a crucial reflection on the underlying mechanisms that govern our contemporary world, while simultaneously challenging us to envision a future that allows for the possibility of new paradigms.