Fondazione Prada will present the exhibitions True Value and T.T.T.—Template Temples of Tenacity from July 7 to September 25, 2016 by Theaster Gates and Nástio Mosquito, respectively. Conceived by Elvira Dyangani Ose as independent projects, the two exhibitions will include installations, site-specific works and projections, as well as collective experiences and musical events that will actively involve the public.

The practice of Theaster Gates (Chicago, 1973) embraces a wide range of disciplines and a variety of artistic vocabularies—sculpture, painting, installation art, music and performance—as well as urban development and social practice. Founder of the non-profit organization Rebuild Foundation, Gates holds a chair at the Department of Visual Arts at Chicago University where he supervises the Arts and Public Life program.

True Value will bring together a selection of existing works and new commissions in two different spaces at Fondazione Prada. The Cisterna will feature works in which the artist explores habitual, everyday things, immersed in the most evocative Black aesthetics. Gates operates on the conviction that everyday objects convey a deep understanding, not only intrinsic to their material aspect, but reminiscent of the experiences in which they have been immersed. On the first floor of the Podium, Gates will host True Value (2016)—the installation after which the exhibition is named—which presents his rendition of an abandoned hardware store. True Value (2016) gathered materials, objects and tools removed from their original context and relocated in an art environment, deploying a framework to formulate a poetic and pragmatic space around objects of trade and human relationships those economic and labour exchanges create. The exhibition is a further opportunity to explore certain nearby cultural and commercial entities, observing local stories, socio-political patterns, and economically and culturally under-explored communities in the hope of setting in motion a new cartography through which to visit and engage an overlooked Milan.

Multifaceted artist Nástio Mosquito (Luanda, Angola, 1981) soon left behind his training as a television cameraman and film director to embrace an artistic practice that brings together music, video, installations and performance in unmistakably personal ways. Internationally acclaimed for his irreverent and provocative performances, Mosquito, more often than not, has adopted the role of an unpredictable showman, comprising the characters of a presenter, singer, actor and theatrical producer.

T.T.T.—Template Temples of Tenacity will feature three entirely new works by Mosquito and will take place on the ground floor of the Podium, the Cinema and the outside spaces of Fondazione Prada. The project comprises three distinctive elements for which Mosquito has collaborated with a group of international artists. WEorNOT (Nastivicious’ Temple #1) (2016) is a site-specific installation featured on the ground floor of the Podium, conceived and realized by Nastivicious—the collective that Mosquito and Spanish artist Vic Pereiró founded in 2008—in collaboration with illustrator Ada Diez. Through this collaboration, the Podium is transformed into a contemporary temple, a platform for collective communion, in which the glass surface of the façades is covered by a large-scale caricature-like stained glass windows. Mosquito has collaborated with musician Dijf Sanders and choir The Golden Guys for the production of I MAKE LOVE TO YOU. YOU MAKE LOVE TO ME. LET LOVE HAVE SEX WITH THE BOTH OF US. (PART 1- THE GREGORIAN GOSPEL VOMIT) (2016). This performative experience will be held in the open courtyard of Fondazione Prada and will involve two choirs, each consisting of 15 singers. The first two performances will take place on Thursday, July 7 and Friday, July 8, 2016. Mosquito will also present SYNCHRONICITY IS MY BITCH: THE CINEMATIC EXPERIENCE (2016), to be hosted in September at Fondazione Prada. It is an audiovisual work assembling the artist’s latest album, Gatuno, Eimigrante & Pai de Família (2016), with a number of visual and filmic references extracted from a series of African films, documentaries and forms of vernacular television from the past 20 years.

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