Los Otros, 2015

Los Otros, is a Elizabeth Aro's solo exhibition/installation, sponsored by the Consulate Generale of the Republic of Argentina and housed in the former church of San Carpoforo, opened for the first time in August as part of the events of Expo in the city. The exhibition sees the collaboration of the Municipality of Milan and the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera.2015Ex Chiesa di San Carpoforo/Accademia di Brera, Milano, Italy

This time around, Aro highlights the idea of alterity through the consideration of the existence of other faces, customs and languages. Inside the Ex-Church of San Carpoforo, the viewers find themselves in darkness; the blacks of the walls dominate and contrast with the colour photographs of strikingly illuminated bodies. These bodies are foreshortened, isolated figures of men and women with different gestures and poses and with sharp contours. Although they are contemporary, their poses and expressions evoke figures from classical painting -apostles or angels. Aro uses the essential qualities of painting, but expresses them with a language likened to the structure of viedo or organised around photography. Between the painting of the baroque artist Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio and Bill Viola's videos, these images engulf the viewer and converse from a contemporary location as they deal with sentiments and universal situations. The artist also realises a sculptural pieces in line with previous works and presents here a large ball of felt, with a diameter of around almost 3 metres, that hangs from the ceiling. This huge ball represents the world - the skin of the earth in a world that falls towards the south and progressively loses order and splits apart; a world which is welcoming, but at the same time a place where clearly not everybody fits.