Dance

Drawing

Performance

Installation

Performative drawing and collaboration have been central to Paola’s work for years. The artist sees the body as the locus of both personal and cultural narratives. Institutional oppression begins with the control of bodies and with the regulation of drives and impulses. In a time of mass displacement and forced migrations the body can become the only home left to inhabit, and bodies, in revolt, war or natural disasters, perform in the spectacle of TV and online news.

, the artist explored the possibility of building an installation that also functioned as  a stage set in the theatrical  sense. Sound became part of  the drawing  performances, prompting synaesthetic responses. Collaborating with Fiona Quilligan was an initiation into  the choreographic process..  DJ and broadcaster Nigel Wood brought his vast world music collection and his expertise to the project. Thanks to Sami Moukaddem for offering the use of his music to this project.

Two earlier solo exhibitions, Natural Artifice at Soma Contemporary in 2014, and Body Drawings, at Pallas projects in Dublin in 2012, had displayed Catizone’s two hand drawings, performance videos and other drawings and paintings. Choreographer Fiona Quilligan was a guest performer at the openings.

Converge Diverge emerged from these earlier iterations. In The back Loft, Catizone’s earlier drawings were shown and new work was also made in situ, with the addition of sound added to the drawing process.

La Catedral Studios, Dublin, Ireland

Converge Diverge

Kevin (Dancing in heaven, entertaining angels)

Audiovisual

Collaboration

In 2007, Catizone was working at Arklink, an arts project for children run by The Ark at Fatima Mansions, in Dublin. Her close friend, Maeve Halpin, was at the time the director of Care Local, an organisation caring for elderly people living alone in Dublin. 

Paola spoke to dancer friends, both hers and her children, and to one of Maeve’s friends, an elderly man who attended dance classes in Rathmines church. She planned and organised a number of local venues and invited a number of people to participate in the making of this video. She then invited videographer Jimmy Reynolds to film the encounters.

The video was shot in a variety of locations, including the old Fatima Mansions, The Oblates in Inchicore, and Maeve’s house in Rathmines. Reynolds contributed the breakdancing section, filmed in a community centre in South Dublin.

The video was shown at an exhibition in the then Juice restaurant, and the proceeds of sales went to Care Local. It was later also shown at Mudra, Catizone’s solo exhibition at the Italian Cultural institute in Dublin in 2008.

The aim of this work is to convey the healing and connecting power of movement and dance, one of humanity’s earliest forms of celebration, communication and expression. Dance can be embraced at any age, and dancing  doesn’t require special skills or virtuosity, just a sense of being alive, in the body in the present moment. To dance is to be human.

Paola Catizone

Dance

Converge Diverge, 2015

La Catedral Studios, Dublin, Ireland

About dancing and Growing Old Gracefully, 2007

Juice Restaurant, Dublin, Ireland