Matilde Casssani

Matlide Cassani’s work intersects the borders of architecture, installation and performance. Her research explores pluralism of religion as it manifests itself in contemporary non-traditional spaces. After her graduation she was involved as a design consultant for the GTZ, a German association for technical cooperation, in Sri Lanka, for a project of reconstruction and development post tsunami. It was during this experience that she started meticulously observing and deepening her interest in spatial implications of ‘cultural pluralism’, with a particular attention to the ways displaced people maintain their identity after moving from one country to another. This exploration led her to realize diverse curatorial works, as ‘Countryside worship’/‘A celebration Day’, in occasion of Monditalia at the XIV Venice Architecture Biennale, about the Indian Harvest Festival that brings together thousands of Sikhs settled in the city of Novellara, in the Pianura Padana. A testimony of authentic cultural hybridization. She will talk about her solo exhibition “Sacred Spaces in Profane Buildings” at the Shorefront for Art and Architecture, New York and another recent initiative “It’s just not cricket”, which, chosen as pretext the sport field like aggregating space, acts as a magnifying glass of the story concerning a complex territory, the controversial relationship between neighboring countries and the recent importance of the town of Brenner, the border town, during the recent migratory crises. Our conversation will finally conclude touching her performance “Everything, Order and Disorder”, a joyful collective celebration conceived for Manifesta12, event held in Palermo and centered on the capital’s syncretism of cultures, part of the European Nomadic Biennial and her participation to this current 17th Venice Architecture Biennale.