Invernomuto

Invernomuto, Portrait 2018, Photo by Jim C. Nedd

BIOGRAPHY

Invernomuto is the name of the artistic personality generated in 2003 by Simone Bertuzzi (Piacenza, 1983) and Simone Trabucchi (Piacenza, 1982). Based in Milan, Invernomuto is the author of projects developed across time and space, from which cycles of interconnected works further originate. Invernomuto’s research ranges among images in movement, sound, performance, and publishing. Through these varied media, Invernomuto investigates subcultural universes in which vernacular idioms are approached within a process of affection towards oral culture and contemporary mythology. This observation is carried out through an eye that seeks contamination and regeneration in them.

Invernomuto’s works have been exhibited in various contexts, including recently Pinksummer, Genova; Cremona Art Week, Cremona; Una Boccata d’Arte, Vermogno (BI); MAXXI, Rome; OGR, Turin; Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Vaduz: MACRO, Rome; Sismógrafo, Porto; VOID Gallery, Derry.

Invernomuto’s recent publications are VERNASCACADABRA (Xong Collection, 2023) and Black Med (Humboldt Books, 2022).

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WORK ON DISPLAY

MALÙ – Lo Stereotipo della Venere Nera in Italia [censored], 2015
HD video, color, sound
30:08 min

This work analyzes the construction of the image of the black female body within Italian society, starting from the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars with the exhibitions of the so-called “Hottentot Venus” in the nineteenth century, moving to Italian fascist colonialism in Abyssinia and Italian cinema and television in the 1960s, up until the “Rubygate” scandal. Many of these images are found footage taken from the Mondo Movie films, a genre of pseudo-documentaries of the 1960s and ‘70s which presented exotic scenes intentionally staged to provoke scandal and voyeurism among the audience. Through critical film editing, Invernomuto reflects these images in the form of a video-essay highlighting the perpetration across the decades of collective racist stereotypes deriving from colonialism. The title of the work refers to a famous dessert, Coppa Malù, which was promoted in the 1980s through a photograph of a naked black female body displaying whipped cream on her arm.