De Renava is the brand new Bonifacio’s Art Biennial in Corsica, France. Having “Rouge Odyssée” [Red Odyssey] as its title and theme, the exhibition aims to establish dialogues between art, architecture and the nature that surrounds the region. Instead of monumental spaces, the event focuses on the plurality of the city, spreading around the city works in video, installation and new technologies.
Isaac Julien presents “The Leopard” (2007), work also exhibited at Milan Triennial (2017) and at Gwangju Biennial (2009). The video is an edited cinema version of “Western Union: Small Boats”, from the same year. The film takes inspiration in Luchino Visconti's masterpiece “Il Gattopardo" (1963). Actress Vanessa Myrie guides us on her wanderings through Palazzo Gangi, contemplating a kind of cinema afterlife, haunted by its characters. The opulent and luxurious interiors of the building, now abandoned, echo even more strongly the ghosts of decadence, echoing stories of immigration to Sicily, which, in the 2000s, became the destination of countless refugees from Libya who sought to run away from war and famine.
“The Leopard” uses the idiom of classical experimental cinema to communicate through the non-representational and suggestive, rather than relying on the strictly narrative. The work is not about storytelling as such, but about creating an environment in which an accumulation of sensations, through images and sound, creates a complex, thought-provoking and intriguing piece.
Learn more on the De Renava's website.