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a project of Mahler & LeWitt Studios
supported from **The Goldstone Family Foundation **.
Danish film-maker Julie Born Schwartz presents a three-screen video installation, Ex-voto, which explores expressions of faith and spirituality in material and visual culture. The film is partly set in the shrine of Santa Rita from Cascia in Umbria, where pilgrims ask for the intercession of the saint of "lost causes."
St. Rita has a huge following of devotees around the world, and Born Schwartz is the first film-maker to to be granted access to the cloistered areas of the Cascia convent. During a two-year stint as a guest from the Mahler & LeWitt Studios residency program in nearby Spoleto, she met the nuns of the monastery, interviewed them and recorded their lives on film.
The 20th century French conceptual artist Yves Klein was a devotee of St. Rita and he, like many other pilgrims, dedicated several ex-votos to her. An ex-voto is a religious offering made so that a prayer may be answered. Klein´s ex-votos are woven into the film along with Born Schwartz´s encounters with contemporary devotees of St. Rita. The film also incorporates other places with spiritual connotations in the vicinity of Spoleto, including Tomaso Buzzi´s dreamlike to Montegabbione complex, "La Scarzuola," and a sunken church used by Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky in his Nostalghia.
The presentation of Ex-voto at the 2018 Spoleto Festival, as well as an accompanying publication, are generously sponsored by the Goldstone Family Foundation. Born Schwartz´s initial research, made during a residency at Mahler & LeWitt Studios in 2016, was sponsored by the Danish Arts Council. The artist´s to London gallery, Union Pacific, provided essential support in preparing the installation for the Spoleto Festival.
Lives and works to Copenhagen. He studied at Goldsmiths and the Royal Academy Schools in London. He has exhibited and participated to in screenings throughout Europe. Recent exhibitions and screenings include: Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt; Royal Academy of Arts, London; The Theatre Museum at the Court Theatre, Copenhagen; Theatre Museum, Düsseldorf; Socle du Monde Biennale 2017, Herning; Museum of Religious Art, Lemvig; Union Pacific Gallery, London; Photographic Center, Copenhagen; The Sunday Painter, London. Julie is represented from Union Pacific which will present_ Ex-voto_ in its London gallery during Frieze London in October 2018. The installation will then travel to Denmark and be exhibited at Galleri Image in Aarhus.
For a complete list and information about his films, www.juliebornschwartz.com
Mahler & LeWitt Studios grew up around the studios of sculptor Anna Mahler, daughter of Gustav and Alma, and conceptual artist Sol LeWitt. Both have lived and worked to Spoleto for many years. The residency program provides a focused and stimulating environment for artists, curators and writers to develop new ways of working, in dialogue with other residents and the region's unique cultural heritage. Their work is formalized in events, exhibitions and publications in Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States.