Francesca Cornacchini: Giunone Caprotina (2022), Nonae Caprotinae (2022).
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Giunone Caprotina, 2022
Installation
Beta cap, goat horns, duct tape, masking tape, Plexiglas, metal brackets, bolts
Nonae Caprotinae, 2022
Environment, installation.
Audio, acrylic spray paint on sheet, mattress, green LED.
Francesca Cornacchini's IUNO is an archeological piece produced in a temporal paradox. It is the attribute of a transfigured pagan deity, represented by two large goat horns grafted onto a baseball cap; elements from different eras and contexts, associated according to a principle that recalls that of the Eternal Return or, rather, that suggests the existence of an archetypal invariability.
The horns, precariously attached with adhesive tape, are an attribute of Giunone Caprotina, a deity of Etruscan origin, goddess of fertility and rebirth, guardian of every natural reproductive cycle. The cap, on the other hand, decorated with a laurel wreath, represents the indispensable accessory of the raver, an emblematic figure of underground culture that has always been a source of inspiration for the artist. As symbol of the subculture, which embodies more than any other, the subversive dimension of the party, the raverbecomes the contemporary equivalent of the goddess.
Alongside the hat, which can be found in IUNO's living room, is the intervention conceived by the artist for the bedroom; generally used for residencies. A green light and a speaker playing psy-trance music lead the visitor into the cave of a squatter goddess, dominated by an unmade bed on whose mattress reads the inscription "BABY DETONATE FOR ME." The phrase, like the bed, explicitly refers to the sensual and seductive character attributed to the goddess of reproduction, Giunone Caprotina.
Where IUNO's living room is presented as a canonical exhibition space, where the lighting and support of the work suggest the presentation of an archaeological find, the bedroom allows the object to be recontextualized in the contemporary.
Wearing the new headdress, Iuno is transformed into the priestess of a profane ritual which stems, as in the ancient Nonae Caprotinae, from the loss of control: the syncopated rhythm of the psy-trance music and the frenetic movement of the body thus correspond to the generative fury present in the Roman ceremony. The party dimension becomes the space of divine intervention, a place within which to indulge the mania, a circumscribed interval of time that ensures prosperity, harmony, and order.
Paganism and underground culture, recurrent themes in Francesca Cornacchini's work, can thus be read as dimensions endowed with the same subversive charge, consistent alternatives to dominant cultures.
Text by Giulia Gaibisso