Cat Caravan

October 12, 2023, 19:00-21:00 – opening
October 12, 13,14, 19, 20, 21, 2023, 16:00-20:00
Zpace (The House of Zemstvo, 103 Al. Șciusev str., Chișinău)

Cat Caravan is an artistic initiative created in Moldova by Natalia and Arturo de Ita to promote the respect and love for animals, to educate on their tenderness and to attack the many wicked practices of human bestiality against nature that prevail in human societies. In a few words, it advocates for the wellbeing of animals trapped by the human world through art. The Collective has exhibited its works in the Republic of Moldova, Denmark and the Netherlands. Its members dedicate their full time to art production, book printing, and courses on artistic education.

This exhibition is an anthology of the visual poetry of Natalia and Arturo de Ita. It comprises a selection from their most recent projects developed in Moldova. In the photographs from the Cat Caravan project, the usage of religious imagery calls for a contemporary, tender return to the ancestral glorification of felines. The stills from the photographic performance Dandelion Farm convey the hardships of the poet’s trade, a craft expelled from the modern world that survives and resists through the extraction of Poetry from the most unfriendly landscapes and situations. The majority of photos, however, belong to Tender Infinite Souls, a series of double exposures depicting, technically, a conjunction of landscape and subject in order to capture real portraits of Mother Nature’s face. Parallel to this series, the animals that appear butchered and fragmented photographically warn against the separation of humankind from Nature. The exhibition includes the presentation of the video poem Flowers.