An Article by Rebecca Mazzon
"It is not frequent for me to get lost in a city. I have a weird sense of orientation. Like an animal’s instinct, I always need to know where I am, which road I should take, slowly drawing a map inside my head. I don’t think that getting lost in the streets of a city is actually that common anymore: when there is a GPS device always telling you where to go, the fragile figure of the flâneur has probably got lost somewhere between the wrong directions given by Google and the art of always being on time. For this reason, when I first went to Mare Karina, it wasn’t by accident, like it could happen if you wander around the city; it was rather with the specific purpose of going to the opening of an exhibition. I can’t remember the first exhibition held at Mare Karina that I ever went to. What I can remember is how it took me a few months, a few exhibitions, to actually get the spatiality of the gallery, which, in the meantime, was constantly changing, rethinking the spaces around the exhibition that was being held. Placed in the neighborhood of Castello, in Venice, Mare Karina is located in a residential area, populated by real Venetian people (the ones who choose to remain), a few tourists, and many students. Mare Karina appears as a big window overlooking a square. On the other side of Campo de le Gate —that is the name of the Venetian square where the gallery is located—there is a restaurant, where you can have a bite of some typical Venetian cuisine. If you pass the gallery, around the corner, you will find a minimarket, a bar, and a greengrocer’s at the end of the street. Positioned on the ground floor, if you look into the window of Mare Karina, you won’t be staring at the inside of a little world that starts and finishes within the walls of the gallery. I like to think that, if you look inside the window, you will get a perspective on what is happening around us, on the outside. And if you look above instead, you will see different kinds of flowers, depending on the season we are in, on the terrace overlooked by an apartment, taken care of by the people who live there. When I met Marta Barina to hear about Mare Karina, it was a beautiful day in the middle of June. I was running late for our appointment, and we were in the middle of a heatwave. When I arrived at the gallery, I was feeling a little bit shy. After greeting me, Marta showed me the exhibition that was being held at that time. Then, we sat at the bar around the corner (the one with the minimarket and the greengrocer’s). I pulled out my notebook and started reading her the interview questions, handwritten the week before in bright green ink. I asked Marta, sitting right in front of me, to explain to me the way Mare Karina works, and we had a conversation for a little less than one hour about how the project was born, what kind of choices a gallery needs to make, and what it means to take care of an event’s production. As she told me, Mare Karina is not just a gallery; we have to think about it as an umbrella, and under that umbrella there are all the different kinds of activities that Mare Karina does. It could be managing the production for an exhibition during the Biennale, or hosting the recording of a podcast, transforming it into an opportunity to organize a talk."
"When creating something, since in order to exist you need to learn to co-exist, the exhibitions within the gallery are always accompanied by a text written by an author different from the artist, combining what you can think with something you can see or even hear, broadening the vision. When putting something out into the world, it is important to figure out what our contribution to the world is. In a moment made up of many different intangible experiences, when an event is better once it has been digitalized, one of the many issues is the type of experience you are interested in creating, and that is probably the starting point of every project or exhibition held. While talking, I got to notice how the things we were saying seemed to guide us to recognize the importance of creating relationships and connections with the people you live close to, building a relationship with the place you live in. To coexist, you may have to rearrange yourself to be able to make the other person exist, and it is by rearranging yourself, modifying yourself a bit in relation to others, that you will open yourself to different situations. As Marta told me, Venice is a city that can open many possibilities, but you have to give her something first; you need to demonstate your ability to receive something back. When finding yourself going over and over to the same place with the same people, it is in that repetitiveness that you can discover foundations. It is with the help and support given by others that you can really stand on your own. By the end of the hour that we shared, I asked Marta what the meaning of making an exhibition could be today, and what role curatorship plays. After taking a moment to reflect, the answer she gave me was about creating a community when working on a project, since it is not possible to create something alone. On a second instant, she told me how successively, together with the community you create, it is important to question the reality we are immersed in. Finally, you have to work for the reality that you desire: exhibitions and curatorship are what follow. “I think that people like us are trying to change something with their work” she said looking at me. A moment before heading back to the gallery, Marta asked me what my plans for the future were and what I would like to do in the future. We walked while I was telling her about my interests, and the things that I hope will became my job. Then, before saying goodbye, we took a moment during that hot day in the middle of June, to stare at the flowers on the terrace above the gallery: a little break before going back to our day."