La Tombola

  • 2014 - 2015
  • Pellestrina, Venice Italy
  • Multimedia Installation, 8 photographs, Sound Installation, Film

La Tombola is an audiovisual installation which combines a documentary film with a series of photographic portraits.

The film La Tombola describes life on the island of Pellestrina through interviews with local residents and it concerns many relevant social and political subjects. The interviews are combined with sequences of the game La Tombola in which numbers are called out. The rough voices of participants mark the layout in the film, while a unique ambiance is created as the game is merged with interviews on political, social, cultural, and economic issues of the small island. The idea of La Tombola is to convey a comprehensive image of Pellestrina. Short stories and conversations are woven with the game, and highlights changes that have occurred over the years. Throughout the game several social aspects are approached, such as, entertaining, socializing, aging and the movement of time.



reviews

"Tucked in an anteroom a little back from the water is one of my favourite works of the exhibition: Chilean, Switzerland-based, artist Enrique Muňoz Garcia’s documentary work, Tombola. The voices of the locals of the long and thin island of Pellestrina capture me. So does the way vignettes of interviews and stories string their lives together through the frame of the game Tombola, in which coloured counters, that look like multifarious Murano glass beads, are arranged on charts by women as numbers are called. Played in an empty school house, the game is an important part of the life of a community whose island protects Venice from the Adriatic, while its youth, and eventually its social structure, disappears. It’s the soundtrack that really brings this work to life, particularly the timbre and rough music of a drinking song I realise I have been hearing for a while. Once I have its source, and stop and watch, and translate it for myself, I am freely laughing at the joyful defiance and humour it embodies. Along with candid photographic portraits of some of its women, the entire work achieves an unexpected sense of spontaneous intimacy, as if we have passed the open door of a home and glimpsed the rich dynamics of the family gathered there.”

Jodie Dalgleish, EyeContact, 2015

exhibitions

  • 2015
  • 56 International Art Exhibition. La Biennale di Venezia. Collateral Event / Jump into the Unknown / La Tombola
  • Palazzo Loredan dell’ Ambasciatore
  • Venice, Italy
  • 2015
  • Ammaraggio / Landing / Nine Dragon Heads
  • Casa Punto Croce
  • Venice, Italy

press

  • 2015
  • Bieler Tagblatt
  • Von Muscheln und bunten Knöpfen
  • [pdf]
  • 2015
  • Jump into The Unknown
  • Poster
  • [pdf]
  • 2015
  • Annelise Zwez
  • Nine Dragon Heads in Venice
  • [pdf]
  • 2015
  • Nine Dragon Heads
  • 20th Anniversary
  • [pdf]
  • 2015
  • 56 International Art Exhibition. La Biennale di Venezia.
  • Jump into the Unknown Catalogue
  • [pdf]
  • 2015
  • 56 International Art Exhibition. La Biennale di Venezia.
  • Official Catalogue
  • [pdf]
  • 2015
  • 56 International Art Exhibition. La Biennale di Venezia.
  • Press Release EN
  • [pdf]
  • 2015
  • 56 International Art Exhibition. La Biennale di Venezia.
  • Press Release ITA
  • [pdf]
  • 2015
  • 56 International Art Exhibition. La Biennale di Venezia.
  • Jump into the Unknown Invitation
  • [pdf]
  • 2015
  • Eye Contact
  • Nine Dragon Heads in Venice
  • [pdf]