The accompanying catalogue for Elisa Sighicelli's Petits Rats is now available! With essays by vice director of Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Marcella Beccaria and artistic director of Arte Fiera (Bologna) Simone Menegoi.
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Petits Rats showcases a series of photographs on Edgar Degas’s ballerina bronzes, stored as the permanent collection at Museu de Arte de São Paulo. With a single source lighting, Elisa Sighicelli played with angles and framings to create scenes packed with young dancers, referred to as les petits rats in the nineteenth century Paris Opera. Though cinematographic in outcome, Sighicelli did not reinterpret the background and context of the bronzes. Hinges of the metal shelvings in the storeroom and labels on the figures were kept as part of the composition, drawing a parallel between the physical location of the bronzes and the historical implications of the ballerinas’ social conditions.
