Gea Casolaro (Rome, 1965) is an Italian artist based in Rome and Paris. Her work investigates, through photography, video, writing and installations our relationship with images, news, society, history. Her research aims to activate a permanent dialogue between experiences and people, in order to expand empathy and the aptitude to analyse the reality through the views of the others.
In 2016 she was the winner artist for the creation of a public art monument for the “Parco Eternot” born on the site where the infamous Eternit factory stood in Casale Monferrato.
Her works are present in public collections, among others at MAXXI – Museo della Arti del XXI secolo Rome; CNA – Centre National de l’Audiovisuel, Dudelange Luxembourg; Mart – Museo d’Arte Contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto.

 

Mare Magnum Nostrum

Installation

2021

Mare Magnum Nostrum is a participatory art project that spans the various countries of the Mediterranean, relying on the collaboration of institutions, associations, and above all the public, who will send their photos of daily life unfolding on the shores of our sea, taken in any country, location, time and season. These photos show at least some small piece of the Sea, photos of parties, departures, tragedies, protest: photos of all kinds and times. Uploaded directly to the web site of the project by the public, the photos create a plurality of points of view on our shared sea.
The work is composed of a web site and a three-dimensional immersive installation representing at 360 degrees the Mediterranean Sea.
The photos uploaded by people will be included in the installation, becoming an integral part of the work. Day after day, a rhizomatic cartography is being developing, made of life that intertwine on this sea that has always been a source of exchanges between civilizations, a true common basin that we share and that unites us, abolishing the usual opposing point of view “we on this shore and them on the other”. The installation places the viewer in the center of the water, to really see the Mediterranean “like this huge lake that stretches from Gibraltar to the Dardanelles, and from Tunis to Venice”: not a frontier between peoples, but at the contrary, a universe that includes us all.
Mare Magnum Nostrum is a project by Gea Casolaro, curated by Leonardo Regano, winner of the 8th Edition of Italian Council, program to promote Italian contemporary art in the world by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture. Presented by the Regional Directorate of Museums of Emilia-Romagna, in September 2021 Mare Magnum Nostrum has become part of the permanent collection of the National Museum of Ravenna.