Summer Exhibitions: Rossella Biscotti

(Rossella Biscotti: Pharmaceutical Dreams)

The trial of some alleged communist terrorists in Italy in the 1970s, a workshop in a female prison, a patient telling his life story to a psychiatrist under the influence of a truth serum: Rossella Biscotti’s work often explores tensions between individuals and institutions that are trying to control them. Not exactly light-hearted fare. The artist, however, doesn’t tackle these subjects in a dry, documentary way, but by using an array of media. In her solo exhibition at Wiels, she makes use of prisoners’ drawings, a sound work, videos, and even sculpture (made with refuse from the female prison). In a six-hour-long performance in June, Biscotti recreated the trial we mentioned already, with the audience taking its place on the original wooden benches from the courtroom and becoming witnesses of a kind. It may not be rock ‘n’ roll, like the exhibitions of Allen Ruppersberg, Robert Heinecken, or the Wiels residents – but it’s well worth a visit!

• ROSSELLA BISCOTTI: FOR THE MNEMONIST, S. > 17/8, Wiels, www.wiels.org