People Do Water
People Do Water (2013-2024) is a photographic archive of human beings while joining the sea, an observation of people mating with water. Hydrophilia is a sensual pleasure produced by physical contact with water or in relation to images of people immersed in water. This eco-sexual relation with the sea is an attempt to displace the margins between the body and the space around the body, the sea.
Technical details
18 color and b/w film photographic series, printed on photographic paper. Variable dimensions.
hd video installation, 9 min. loop.
Exhibitions
2024, solo show at OPR Gallery, Milano
2019, TEA Contemporary Art Museum, Tenerife Espacio de las Artes, Canary Islands, Spain.
2015, Frieze Art, London, "Curated by Paul Smith and friends", exhibition;
2015, Fotofilmic, short list selection, Canada.
2015, Salon Ligne Roset, public talk with Tommaso Cotroneo, London.
2014, previewed at Onassis Cultural Centre, Athens
2014, Neue Galerie im Homannhaus, Augsburg, "A Process", exhibition + special edition book, Der Greif.
People Do Water | Solo Show at OPR Gallery | 1 min. abstract from 9 min. video installation | 2024
People Do Water | Benedetta Panisson | Opening: 15 May - h: 18.00 / 21.00
On view: 15 May - 31 July, 2024 | Monday - Friday / 14.30 - 18.00 and by appointment
EN
OPR Gallery is pleased to present People Do Water, Benedetta Panisson’s solo exhibition, a photographic project that came to life in 2013 as the artist's desire to define an archive of images depicting the subjects of her obsessive research, bodies immersed in the sea.
People Do Water continues Benedetta Panisson's research on erotic imagery in maritime spaces. The relationship between body and sea becomes a pleasure device and takes shape in hydrophilia: sexual arousal in diving into the sea, and in observing images of people in the water. The exhibition is a confidence: the artist's stakeouts to photograph on film bodies immersed in sea water, the voyeuristic aesthetic of close-ups, the performative action with the waves, the taboo-breaking responses in a video made by her daughter Anita. Panisson stages something so intimate that it belongs to everyone: the relationship with environmental space, which here is a perpetual, and physical, falling in love with the sea. The photographs are part of the personal archive taken by the artist, since childhood, on the beaches of the Venice Lido and continued on various shores.
People do Water was presented in 2016 at the Onassis Cultural Centre in Athens as the beginning of a longterm project.
The sea is the center of Panisson's research: Guarda il Mare, 2004, in which the sea mesmerizes to the point of inactivity; Come to Venice, 2008-2013, a group performance on tides, exhibited at the Maison del l'UNESCO in Paris, at the TEA museum in Tenerife, and in the context of Contingent Movements Archive, platform of the Maldives Pavilion at the 55th Venice Art Biennale; Excess Island, 2011-2021, in which queer oceanic cultures merge into photographic imagery; Island, Sex, Photography, doctoral research project at Durham University (UK); Sexual Display from the Abyss, 2021, on representations of a sexual act between two octopuses, presented at the 11th European Feminist Research Conference; The Sexuality of the Uncontacted, presented at Cambridge University, in 2022; and Sea Fist, a performance made in the waters of Vulcano, and published in the Queering Nature volume of the prestigious Antennae Journal, 2024.
People Do Water | Solo Show at OPR Gallery | 2024
People Do Water | Solo Show at OPR Gallery | 2024
People Do Water | Solo Show at OPR Gallery | 2024
People Do Water | Solo Show at OPR Gallery | Still from video installation | 2024
People Do Water | Solo Show at OPR Gallery | 2024
People Do Water | Solo Show at OPR Gallery | 2024
People Do Water | Solo Show at OPR Gallery | 2024 | 1 min. abstract from 5 min. video installation | by Anita Panisson
People Do Water | Solo Show at OPR Gallery | 2024
People Do Water | Solo Show at OPR Gallery | 2024
People Do Water | Solo Show at OPR Gallery | 2024
People Do Water | Solo Show at OPR Gallery | 2024
Horizonte, mar, exceso, exorbitancia | Excess Island and People do Water @ TEA | 2019
https://teatenerife.es/actividad/taller-horizonte-mar-exceso-exorbitancia/1993?fbclid=IwAR3fcDjX-aRmMH_EE2xPKKfLSvgcyekGNrCj_Gth4da_CX5-io-EaH6NUE4
Phroom | Authorials | 2019 | https://phroommagazine.com/hydrophilia/
People do Water Preview at Der Greif, A Process, Exhibition at Neue Galerie im Homannhaus, Augsburg (2014) + special edition book:
http://process.dergreif-online.de/photographers/benedetta-panisson/
People do Water Preview, 2014, A Process special edition book, Der Greif, Germany
People do Water Preview at Fotofilmic, 2015, shortlisted. Canada: https://fotofilmic.com/?portfolio=benedetta-panisson-milan-italy