Cafagna | Lucciole | February 2023

Von Buren Contemporary presents

Lucciole

solo exhibition of

LUCIANELLA CAFAGNA

With fundraising art lottery in support of Life Project 4 Youth

the exhibition will remain on show until March 18

Von Buren Contemporary is proud to present Lucciole, or Fireflies, the solo exhibition of Rome artist Lucianella Cafagna which arrives at the gallery after being exhibited with great success at Rome museum Palazzo Merulana.

The title of the show refers to one of the best-known articles by Italian filmmaker and intellectual Pier Paolo Pasolini, in which he spoke of the disappearance of fireflies. The loss of the fireflies’ intermittent glow from the Italian countryside served as a metaphor in Pasolini’s work for – among other things – what he called the cultural genocide bound up with the birth of consumerism and the subordination of the countryside and the poor to the new industrial capitalism. A few months after the article was published, Pasolini was murdered.

Lucianella Cafagna’s Palazzo Merulana show was one of a slew of events held across Italy in 2022 to mark the centenary of the great writer’s birth. In the hands of Cafagna, the firefly becomes a symbol which she interprets in ways ranging from cinematic citations and poetic allusions to a disappearing world, to explicit references to streetwalkers known in Italian as ”lucciole”. Above all, Cafagna, who is working at the height of her powers, brandishes her main weapon against cultural flattening: her craft.

During the exhibition opening on Sunday, February 26, a lottery will be launched featuring Cafagna‘s artwork The Blue Turban as the prize with proceeds going to Life Project 4 Youth, an international movement with a mission to assist in the social and professional integration of young adults living in extreme poverty. The Blue Turban is an oil on paper, framed under glass and measuring 18.9 x 14.2 inches (48 x 36 cm).

Tickets for the lottery will go on sale at the vernissage and remain available for the duration of the show, culminating in a draw in the gallery on March 12 and the announcement of the winner during an event organized directly by LP4Y.

Lucianella Cafagna was born in Rome in 1968. She studied at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris and subsequently spent a period training in the studio of Pierre Carron, a protégé of Balthus. In 2011, Cafagna took part in the 54th Venice International Art Biennale with a life-size work exhibited in the Italian Pavilion, while in 2019, Rome’s prestigious Palazzo Merulana held a retrospective of her work. In November-December 2022, the same museum invited the artist back to hold a second exhibition marking Pasolini’s centenary.

​Childhood and adolescence are recurrent themes in Cafagna’s art, which blends the formal elegance of traditional training with a trajectory into the contemporary world. Art critics have highlighted her ability to evoke a sense of timeless suspension, her subjects hovering between memory and oblivion as poignant reminders of our evanescence.