Project Room - Claudia Passeri

Rurale Brutale

Coming from an Italian immigrant family, Claudia Passeri maintains an ambivalent connection with her origins, one shaped by the shifting impact of borders, of limits that are geographic, political, linguistic, and social. This connection has fostered her closely intertwined artistic and curatorial practices. In her most recent research, she particularly focuses on the traditions and customs of the central Italian countryside, and on the ongoing or renewed impact of certain popular beliefs on our contemporary ways of life. Passeri tries to subvert the codes and reinvent the narratives of rural everyday life through new perspectives. The contradictions this brings to light give birth to an experimental approach that questions how the loci of rurality are experienced, represented, and reimagined today.

Claudia Passeri (born 1977, Esch-sur-Alzette) lives and works in Luxembourg and Italy. Since 2002, her work has been shown regularly at cultural institutions and in public spaces, in Belgium, France, Italy, and Luxembourg. In 2011 she won the Edward Steichen Award Luxembourg, and in 2016 she had a research residency at the Fonderie Darling in Montréal. In 2019 she exhibited her project Aedicula in the Chapelle de la Charité, under the curatorship of Danielle Igniti, as part of the Arles Rencontres de la Photographie. In 2022 she created two monumental installations, one of which was P.G.R. - Per Grazia Ricevuta (For Grace Received), at Sanem/Belvaux. Parallel to her artistic practice, Claudia Passeri frequently organizes collaborations with artists and creators from different fields. In 2006 she set up the curatorial project Agence Borderline with Michèle Walerich, then initiated the collective Common Wealth with Benoît Delzelle in 2018, which was awarded the Bourse Bert-Theis and led to an artists’ residency in Italy in July 2019.