Martina Conti - Exercises for a Polluted Mind

San Marino National Gallery, which was opened to the public in its permanent location on 7 July 2018 (on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the inclusion of San Marino in the UNESCO World Heritage List), contains a particular and dedicated place, like many other international museums: a Performative Archive, a space for rethinking the artistic history of the country. The Permanent Collection is deeply connected to the Performative Archive and is open to schools, cultural operators, young Sammarinese artists and scholars; moreover, it participates in international projects and it interfaces in an interdisciplinary way with cinema, theatre, dance, architecture, landscape and literature.
On the occasion of this edition of the Venice Biennale, the vitality of the museum is fundamental; indeed, the promotion of San Marino cultural and artistic heritage is stimulating a new attitude towards the relationship between "citizen and politics", a very salient issue to the citizens of a small state.
The work of Martina Conti, chosen for this annual participation of the Republic of San Marino in the 58th Venice Biennale, shows movement and condensation as an act of inner reconciliation, and displays the two sides of San Marino's historical and cultural heritage as an ancient democracy and its status as a "political body". This idea is conveyed through a performative action involving a group of San Marino Members of Parliament in the Hall of the Great and General Council of the Government Building, seat of the Parliament. The group, guided by the artist, performs a set of figurative exercises and psycho-physical meditation, in order to express the reflection of oneself, in an attempt to reconstruct a new idea of social body, as the body of the citizen. 
The performing Members of Parliament are elegantly dressed - as prescribed by the internal regulation - and the performance takes place before an ordinary parliamentary session. But they move barefoot, as a symbol of the contact between human body and earth; a profound, primordial sense: this brings them back to being like everyone, human beings, people, citizens. The Members of Parliament lying barefoot on the floor of the Hall of the Parliament also symbolize the physical contact, the linkage to the foundations of the oldest seat of the democratic institution. Exercises for a polluted mind provokes a sense of solidarity and relates to the frontiers of ethics.
The work, after the Biennale, will be hosted by the San Marino National Gallery and by the MA*GA Museum in Gallarate and, in parallel, it will become part of the collections of the museum. 
The Venice Biennale has become again an opportunity to support and disseminate the work of a young Sammarinese artist, which will enrich public collections with a work specifically designed for San Marino. A good practice that the National Gallery will increasingly follow in its activity.