I am spacious, singing flesh

Curated by Kathryn Weir, the remarkable exhibition in which This new monograph explores multiple transformations: from self, others, collective identities, struggles, liberations and refuges. A powerful and unexpected dialogue is established with a certain number of objects of popular devotions, taken from archaeological or liturgical collections Italian, evoking the ambivalent threshold present in Tabouret's practice, portal to multiple temporalities and subjectivities through which to consider alternative relationships between human beings, between being human beings and their environment in the face of ecological and societal crises, but also in communication with the supernatural. Through 25 works by Tabouret – the first ones date from 2008, but the majority from the artist's last decade of multifaceted practices – the exhibition articulates the different structures and fluidities present within the subjectivity and identities constructed through paintings, sculptures, videos and works on paper. Wandering subjectivities and magical materialism constitute the main thematic axes of the exhibition. Gradually, suspended potential and metaphysical friction inscribed in the works emerge at through associations – interior/exterior, material/spiritual, visible/invisible. The enigmatic language of ritual and repetition in the universes Tabouret's amniotic fluid reveals mysterious and intertwined states of consciousness individual identity and broader forces. The exhibition also explores a double and multiple condition of the self, in relation to fertility and maternity, notably through the presence of two Matres Matutae of Capua, admirable ex-votos sculpted in volcanic tuff between 500 and 200 BC whose magical presence recreates a renewed material link with the earth. Process of incarnation and transfiguration, monstrous creatures and inexplicable, everything is linked by a miraculous possibility of transformation. As Hélène Cixous wrote in The Laughter of the Medusa (1975), “I am Flesh spacious singing, on which no one knows which I am more or less human but first and foremost alive since in transformation”. Published on the occasion of the eponymous exhibition at the Palazzo Cavanis, Venice, from April until November 2022, as part of the 59th Venice Biennale.