Rossella Biscotti was born in 1978, in Molfetta, Italy.
She lives and works in Rotterdam.
She is in residency in Kadist and will have a solo exhibiiton in October 2012.
In her works, Rossella Biscotti raises the issue of time and concepts it induces, between real time and fictional time. Attached to the aesthetics of the documentary, she uses it to show that it is impossible to fully account for a truth, various inidual interpretations turning it into a multiple reality. Her work questions the trust that we tend to give too easily to historical documents, whether films, photographs, but also actions. Considering the past as an effective vector of change, her works reflect the active role it plays in the construction of the present, while questioning the legitimacy of History and of those who build it. Historical events are included in the present, creating a undefined time dimension.
The Undercover Man - Rossella Biscotti - 2008
Video, 16mm transfered on DVD, 30'
As a reflection on the idea of memory and collective identity, Rossella Biscotti has chosen a character from the fight against the American Mafia. The project
The Undercover Man revolves around the figure of Joseph D. Pistone, who in the 1970`s and 80`s worked as an undercover FBI agent within the Bonanno and Colombo New York crime families, under the false identity of Donnie Brasco. To this day, and since 1982 when his work led to the largest number of criminal arrests in the history of the Italian-American mafia, Joseph D. Pistone has been living incognito, under special surveillance. Rossella Biscotti`s project allows Joseph D. Pistone the possibility to speak again and therefore, to exist. Inspired by Mike Newell's film, made from this true story (
Donnie Brasco, 1997), the project questions the relationship between reality and fiction, or at least from what we see as reality or fiction: is it possible that a story has been told so well that is accepted by everyone as the official version? An attempt is made by Rossella Biscotti to allow the spectator to develop his own autonomous point of view on the story. It is a project about our needs to be the narrator. Inside a 1940's film-noir set the FBI agent Joseph Pistone a.k.a. Donnie Brasco is questioned about his undercover operation inside the American Mafia in the 1980s.
The Undercover Man - Rossella Biscotti - 2008
Photograph, red marker
As a reflection on the idea of memory and collective identity, Rossella Biscotti has chosen a character from the fight against the American Mafia. The project
The Undercover Man revolves around the figure of Joseph D. Pistone, who in the 1970`s and 80`s worked as an undercover FBI agent within the Bonanno and Colombo New York crime families, under the false identity of Donnie Brasco. To this day, and since 1982 when his work led to the largest number of criminal arrests in the history of the Italian-American mafia, Joseph D. Pistone has been living incognito, under special surveillance. Rossella Biscotti`s project allows Joseph D. Pistone the possibility to speak again and therefore, to exist. Inspired by Mike Newell's film, made from this true story (
Donnie Brasco, 1997), the project questions the relationship between reality and fiction, or at least from what we see as reality or fiction: is it possible that a story has been told so well that is accepted by everyone as the official version? An attempt is made by Rossella Biscotti to allow the spectator to develop his own autonomous point of view on the story. It is a project about our needs to be the narrator.
You have to be focused - Rossella Biscotti - 2008
Exhibition view at Prometeogallery, Milan
As a reflection on the idea of memory and collective identity, Rossella Biscotti has chosen a character from the fight against the American Mafia. The project
The Undercover Man revolves around the figure of Joseph D. Pistone, who in the 1970`s and 80`s worked as an undercover FBI agent within the Bonanno and Colombo New York crime families, under the false identity of Donnie Brasco. To this day, and since 1982 when his work led to the largest number of criminal arrests in the history of the Italian-American mafia, Joseph D. Pistone has been living incognito, under special surveillance. Rossella Biscotti`s project allows Joseph D. Pistone the possibility to speak again and therefore, to exist. Inspired by Mike Newell's film, made from this true story (
Donnie Brasco, 1997), the project questions the relationship between reality and fiction, or at least from what we see as reality or fiction: is it possible that a story has been told so well that is accepted by everyone as the official version? An attempt is made by Rossella Biscotti to allow the spectator to develop his own autonomous point of view on the story. It is a project about our needs to be the narrator.
You have to be focused - Rossella Biscotti - 2008
Exhibition view at Wilfried Lentz Gallery, Rotterdam
As a reflection on the idea of memory and collective identity, Rossella Biscotti has chosen a character from the fight against the American Mafia. The project
The Undercover Man revolves around the figure of Joseph D. Pistone, who in the 1970`s and 80`s worked as an undercover FBI agent within the Bonanno and Colombo New York crime families, under the false identity of Donnie Brasco. To this day, and since 1982 when his work led to the largest number of criminal arrests in the history of the Italian-American mafia, Joseph D. Pistone has been living incognito, under special surveillance. Rossella Biscotti`s project allows Joseph D. Pistone the possibility to speak again and therefore, to exist. Inspired by Mike Newell's film, made from this true story (
Donnie Brasco, 1997), the project questions the relationship between reality and fiction, or at least from what we see as reality or fiction: is it possible that a story has been told so well that is accepted by everyone as the official version? An attempt is made by Rossella Biscotti to allow the spectator to develop his own autonomous point of view on the story. It is a project about our needs to be the narrator.
Le Teste in Oggeto - The Heads in Question - Rossella Biscotti - 2009
Exhibition view, Nomas Foundation, Roma
Rossella Biscotti's discovery of five bronze heads of the Dictator Benito Mussolini and King Victor Emmanuel III, locked up in the basement of the Palazzo degli Uffici in Rome, was the starting point for a new project. Commissioned for the World's Fair of 1942 to the sculptors Giovanni Prini and Domen Rambelli, the heads were never presented to the public: the 1942 World's Fair, planned for Rome, never took place due to the outbreak of World War II.
The Heads in Question project involves the temporary relocation of the bronze sculptures to the premises of the Nomas Foundation. In this context, the heads present their aesthetic value alongside their ideological and political properties, becoming objects of observation and discussion. The presentation of the sculptures is nevertheless not to be perceived as an exhibition in the classical sense, but rather as a process permitting one to re-think their meaning in relation to the contemporary world. The busts are displayed on simple wooden pallets, the same supports on which they were stored. The viewer can walk around them, touch them and look at them from a new position. Seen from above, their monumental presence, typical of fascist propaganda, is no longer intimidating. The exhibition becomes a pretext to question our relationship to the past, and the shifting line between the commissioned artwork and its use as propaganda. After a few days, the sculptures was returned to the basement, in a ritual of circularity that reminds a pagan procession.
