Arte Povera - A New Chapter

The exhibition features works by more than 20 artists, setting up a dialogue between original members of the movement – such as Marisa Merz and Ketty La Rocca – and their international contemporaries Louise Bourgeois, Eva Hesse, Senga Nengudi, Nancy Spero and Carol Rama, as well as contemporary artists including Dala Nasser and Kaarina Kaikkonen.

Rather than refined aesthetics, the works highlight creative processes, intentional unfinishedness, and immediacy. The featured artists expand and diversify the concept of Arte Povera. In addition to materiality, the works address themes such as locality and embodied experience, collectivity and identity, as well as ecology and societal critique.

“This is the first time that Arte Povera is approached from a feminist perspective. The exhibition reveals ways in which women have enriched the content of the movement and how central their influence has been in establishing it as an enduring part of artistic practice,” says EMMA’s curator Ingrid Orman.

Conscious Matter is a large-scale sculptural installation where the mineral iron plays a central role, revealing itself through both cultural and conceptual connotations. Iron is not only used in the sculpture itself, but also in elements such as iron dust, iron ore stones, and decanters filled with iron pigments and iron-rich blood.

The work evokes the alchemical process but is fundamentally rooted in what I define as “Conscious Matter,” with iron minerals serving as a site for the more-than-human – a radical decentering of humanity and an unveiling of what lies beyond a reality defined solely by material existence.

Conscious Matter
Iron, iron chains, yarn, glass, iron ore powder, iron pigments, iron tools, blood
330 x 300 x 300 cm