EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMME FOR SCHOOLS AND FAMILIES ABOUT ANISH KAPOOR’S WORK “DIRTY CORNER”

Curated by Madeinart

A double exhibition in Milan of the work of an artist like Anish Kapoor, universally considered one of the most significant sculptors on the international scene, gives us the possibility to devise a teaching course that offers schools the possibility to examine the languages of contemporary art.

Kapoor’s work has the merit of drawing on profound archetypes and to create involving works, in other words ones able to bring the observer into play through strong perceptive and sensorial experiences.
His art involves space, matter, and their critical complementarity, and makes them interact with the surrounding environment in a surprising way.

The viewers are physically immersed in a dialogue can reveal many meanings, and therefore they are asked not to enjoy it passively, from a distance: their involvement, in fact, is an integral part.
This is indeed the case with the work to be seen in the Fabbrica del Vapore in Milan, a site-specific installation with the ambiguous title “DIRTY CORNER”.

The work consists of a large steel form some 60 metres long inside which the viewers are invited into. The imposing entrance has the form of a calix, the tunnel’s surface is circular.
The work is progressively covered by a mountain of earth that falls on it from outside the tunnel. When walking inside this dark passageway  we are completely immersed in darkness until we arrive at a lighted corner, imperceptible until now, which leads to the way out.
The themes alluded to in this work are, obviously, very many, but the most important are the dynamics of the inside and outside space, and perceptive experience as a means for contacting the archaic collective subconscious.

In order to propose to children and the young a reprocessing of the experience when visiting the show, we can widen their viewpoint by starting from the sensitive awareness of children and adolescents; this unique ability can allow a fresh receptiveness  towards the implications of the work and so we can plan an open-ended  workshop for bringing together the authentic elements suggested by the children and youngsters.

We propose to schools a possibility for exchanging ideas about this intense experience through a reprocessing that will allow their pupils, according to the age-range, to confront the mysterious “darkness” of the work and its material presences through a rediscovery of their individual and collective resources. What is darkness? What allows us to face up to it? What does the experience of this passage lead to?

To face up to darkness is, in fact, a meaningful metaphor for growth. Our work on the resources that permit us to face up to life’s most difficult passages is an itinerary that can sustain the efforts of children and adolescents and that inevitably characterizes some important passages in adulthood.
So here art is being considered as a pretext for a precious reprocessing of our own experience, a cue for working on one’s own maturation.
The children will be invited to elaborate their own particular experiences of the darkness through the creative use of various available material means of expression. The work can involve two-dimensional and three-dimensional elements but also, for the older pupils, include a written contribution.
Finally, the whole group will install their individual works on a large black circular cardboard base with a diameter of a metre and a half which symbolizes a dark place.

So the class will create a group work in which the black of the cardboard will be dominated by the individual creations of the group. The presence of a teacher who will listen closely and be a competent supervisor is fundamental.

In this workshop approach, the theme of listening is basic because there is no question of asking a product from the pupils nor is this a way of simply passing time: the impressions of a particularly competent “public” must be allowed to emerge. The works created, exhibited to the visitors in an appropriate space, will in some way act as an interesting and clarifying feedback.

The works created by each participating “class group” will the be shown during a final event in the Cattedrale venue.  The children’s group work will in fact be put together as a genuine art exhibition open to the public.

Produced by:
Madeinart – A society for the production and promotion of art

Concept by:
Jacopo Pucci Tartari

With the valuable collaboration of:
Alessandra Marcazzan – Psychologist and developmental psychotherapist
Franca Zuccoli – Professor at the Bicocca university, Milan, and teaching supervisor at the Fondazione Pomodoro
Angelo Pacifico – Painter