MARGHERITA GIUSTI | the meatseller. frames
solo exhibition
exhibition opening:
thursday 8th february, 2024,
from 6,30 to 9,30 pm
exhibition closing:
extended until 2nd march, 2024
opening hours:
tuesday to saturday, 4-8pm
screening at 7pm
about.
STUDIO STEFANIA MISCETTI is delighted to present The Meatseller. Frames, a solo exhibition of work by director and animator MARGHERITA GIUSTI.
Giusti returns to the gallery with a new project after presenting her short film Innatura (2021) as the opening piece of the 12th edition of SHE DEVIL, the gallery’s yearly review of video work. First seen at the MAXXI Museum in 2021, Innatura was subsequently shown at the Studio Miscetti in 2022, followed by a presentation at the international biennial BIENALSUR in 2023. This time Giusti offers us a story at once visceral and tender, a journey of personal emancipation that unfolds and is revealed through the body, in all its animal, female nature.
The exhibition features a selection of more than 20 works of acrylic on paper, which Giusti made over the course of 2022 for her animated short The Meatseller (2023). The film, which Giusti directed, was produced by Luca Guadagnino’s Frenesy Film Company and presented at the 2023 Venice Film Festival in the Orizzonti (‘Horizons’) category. The painted works immerse us in the story of the film’s young female protagonist, Selinna Ajamikoko, whom Giusti met in 2022 through Margherita D’Andrea, a social worker at the SPRAR in Rome, an organisation set up to protect asylum seekers and refugees.
After spending more than a year conducting interviews, writing the screenplay, creating the storyboard, and editing the film with Emmanuel Bonomi, Giusti began pre-production in September 2022 with her colleagues Elisa Bonandin, Elisabetta Bosco, Viola Mancini from the MUTA animation collective. Full production then began with a larger group of female animators, and with Enrico Ascoli weaving the original score and sound design into Selinna‘s first-person narration.
The works on display are all inspired by The Meatseller’s most striking and only hand-drawn scene. The film itself was made using a hybrid technique that brings together both analogue and digital technologies, and which favours the use of paper for the story’s most important symbolic and material elements.
The opening night of the exhibition will include two screenings of The Meatseller (2023, 17’) at 19:30 and 20:30, marking the film’s first showing in Rome.
Selinna’s story is true. It’s the story of a girl transforming into a woman and fearlessly overcoming the obstacles that stand in her way, with the clarity of the dream she carries within providing the drive to do so. Through her account I wanted to express something of the wild, visceral strength that exists in every woman: that primal, animal energy that shakes things up, that enables us to rise from the ashes and look to the future with curiosity, as part of the ongoing discovery of the world that continues with every step we take.
MARGHERITA GIUSTI
THE MEATSELLER. CREDITS
With: Selinna Ajamikoko
Director: Margherita Giusti
Screenplay: Margherita Giusti
Interviews: Margherita Giusti, Margherita D’Andrea Producer: Luca Guadagnino
Executive Producer: Lorenzo Giordano
Production Assistant: Giorgia Bonora
Visual Development and Background: Elisabetta Bosco
Editing: Emanuele Bonomi
Sound Designer and Composer: Enrico Ascoli
Art Director: Elisabetta Bosco, Viola Mancini
Storyboard: Margherita Giusti
Layout: Carlotta Vacchetti, Milena Tipaldo
Animators: Margherita Giusti, Carlotta Vacchetti, Milena Tipaldo, Elisa Bonandin, Giulia Landi, Estelle Bray, Camilla Pannone Clean up: Viola Mancini, Tess Tagliaferro, Giada Rizzi
Colorists: Elisabetta Bosco, Silvia Gariglio, Francesca Fanigliulo, Margherita Giusti
Compositing: Margherita Giusti
artist.
MARGHERITA GIUSTI became interested in cinema at an early age. After completing her high school diploma at a liceo classico (classical civilisation and languages), she took a directing course at Cinecittà and made the stereoscopic 3D short film Beato Chi Riceve La Grazia, which was selected in the “Italian Perspectives” category at the 2012 Rome Film Festival. Thereafter she began to work in film and TV in Rome, as an assistant director and storyboard artist.
In 2017, she trained in animation at Turin’s Centro Sperimentale, graduating with the animated documentary En Rang Par Deux, co-directed with Elisabetta Bosco and Viola Mancini. The film was picked for various festivals, winning Best Film at Glocal, Best Student Film at Imaginaria Film Festival, the Audience Prize at the Monstra Animated Film Festival in Lisbon, and finishing third in its category at Italy’s foremost film awards, the Nastri D’Argento.
In 2021 she created the animated logo for SHE DEVIL, an all-female curating collective founded by Stefania Miscetti, whose constantly evolving archive continues to grow.
In 2021, together with Elisabetta Bosco, Elisa Bonandin and Viola Mancini she set up MUTA, an animation collective focusing on experimental and auteur work.
In 2023 she directed the animated documentary short, The Meatseller, produced by Luca Guadagnino’s Frenesy Film Company and selected for the 2023 Venice Film Festival in the Orizzonti (‘Horizons’) short film category.
Currently based in Rome, she works as a freelance director and animator.
For a more complete artist profile, see the artist page.
more exhibition.
more exhibitions by MARGHERITA GIUSTI with STUDIO STEFANIA MISCETTI.
SHE DEVIL - BIENALSUR
group show - MUNTREF
august 9th 2023 - december 2023
SHE DEVIL 13
group show
march 20th - may 24th 2022
S_HE DEVIL 12 + MAXXI selection
video exhibition
june 8-13, 2021
MAXXI museum, roma