Known for his hand-drawn, color-saturated, 3D animated, satirical videos, Solmi seeks to portray a dystopian vision of a present-day society that inexorably continues to regenerate and to renew itself, even as it falls apart in front of our eyes. Imagine the decadence of Fellini Roma (1972). Imagine a scarlet room filled with ornate, grotesque, animated portraits of Pope Ratzinger, Marie Antoinette, George Washington, Montezuma, Idi Amin, Empress Theodora, Napoleon, Columbus, Genghis Khan, Pachacuti and other powerful leaders throughout history. The Brotherhood is a collection of feared and beloved mythical figures that shaped the world. "There's something missing in all writings about power: Very few are able to capture how funny it is. When they examine the horrors that power commits, the sufferings it imposes, the blood with which it stains itself, historians and political scientists always forget to highlight the ridiculous aspects of the inevitable monster and how funny they are, with their ironed uniformed, unearned medals and invented awards."- Oriana Fallaci, Interviews with History and Conversations with Power. In this new video portrait series, which combines drawing, painting and 3D gaming technology (created with Maya, 3dMx and sandbox game engines) Solmi parodies the iconography of Historical Portraiture with his own absurd portraits of the leaders, members of The Brotherhood, an organization whose goal is to keep global chaos alive and well and to promote the degeneration of human race. Through his portraits and short narrative videos Solmi exposes history as propaganda - fabricated, manipulated, and carefully crafted by leaders and governments in order to suit their ideals. He underscores how skewed, incomplete, and irresolute is our knowledge of the past, and he challenges us to question our beliefs on history. Ultimately he claims that through our own patriotic or religious partisanship, we may be perpetuating the myth. Federico Solmi (born in Italy, 1973) currently lives and works in New York. Upcoming museum exhibitions include the Haifa Museum of Art, Israel (solo), Centro Cultural Matucana 100, Santiago, Chile (solo), MIT Boston, Artium Museum-Centre of Contemporary Art in Vitoria-Gasteiz, Basque Country, Spain, CA2M Centro De Arte Dos De Mayo, Madrid, Spain. Solmi's works have been exhibited in several international biennials, such as Frankfurt B3 Biennial of Moving image (forthcoming), First Shenzhen Animation Biennial, China (2013), the 54th Venice Biennial (2011), and Site Santa Fe Biennial, New Mexico (2010). In 2009 Solmi was awarded the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship in the category of Video & Audio by the Guggenheim Foundation. Federico Solmi will teach an experimental filmmaking class at Yale University, New Haven in 2016.

• published: 19 Sep 2015
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