Contemporary Cluster is pleased to present The Post-material Archive 02, a
solo exhibition by Elisa Capucci and the second chapter of an extensive artistic
investigation rooted in contemporary Neo-materialist and Post-humanist
thought. The Post-material Archive 02 explores the kinships between living and
non-living beings, the interactions between species and productive
infrastructures, and the possible configurations of post-human futures.
Capucci’s research does not consider sculpture as a mere formal or aesthetic
outcome, but as an active, epistemic, and pedagogical practice. Inspired by
speculative realism and vital materialism, with particular reference to the
thought of Donna Haraway, the artist investigates sculpture as a diffractive
instrument capable of reconfiguring relationships between humans and
complex matter. From this perspective, the sculptural work becomes a site of
memory, a device for processing grief, and a space of active transformation.
Haraway’s notion of Communities of Compost guides Capucci’s inquiry into the vitality and agency of organic, urban, and industrial matter, shifting attention from the formal outcome to the relational process that dissolves the boundaries between body, space, species, and infrastructures.
The artist uses sculpture as an apparatus capable of generating new narratives through the layering, interference, and metamorphosis of materials. This approach finds its primary expression in installations conceived as multi-sensory environments and ecosystems in transformation. These compositions emerge from the combination of industrial elements, organic materials, and urban residues collected in the territories the artist traverses daily, scraps and fragments that, through processes of sculptural modeling, assemblage, reactivation, and casting, take shape as new hybrid corporeal entities. Through this gesture of recomposition, the work becomes a shared device of memory and contemporary representation, capable of questioning how our active relationship with matter participates in processes of knowledge and in the construction of collective consciousness.
Capucci pays particular attention to the agency of overlooked or discarded materials, questioning their ability to stimulate awareness, cognitive flexibility, and ethical responsibility toward contemporary socio-economic issues. In this second chapter of the project, the artist invites the public to pause, remember, and cultivate new forms of coexistence, forms capable of emerging and persisting even among the ruins of the present, rethinking the relationships that bind bodies, infrastructures, and current socio-economic systems.
The production of the project has been generously supported by the Danish Art Council, and the works were conceived and produced in the studios of Thoravej 29, provided by ArtHub Copenhagen, where the artist is currently carrying out her research.
Elisa Capucci currently lives and works in Copenhagen (DK). She holds a BA and MA in Sculpture from the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna, and subsequently completed a period of study in London, where she attended the Master of Fine Arts at Chelsea College of Arts (UAL). Her training has been enriched by experiences as a studio assistant for internationally recognised artists such as Michael Dean in London and Uffe Isolotto in Copenhagen. Capucci is also the founder of HIDDEN GARAGE, an independent space in Bologna dedicated to emerging artists and autonomous curatorial practices