Clapis Retrospective

Clapis Retrospective was a virtual solo exhibition of Federico Clapis organised by MoCDA, the Museum of Contemporary Digital Art, and curated by its director Serena Tabacchi. It was hosted on Spatial, the platform for shared 3D spaces, which partnered on the project. The opening combined a live performance by the artist with a curatorial tour led by Tabacchi, and objects chosen by Clapis were placed in the room for the audience to interact and create with.

In her text for the show, Tabacchi describes it as a stream of consciousness with a dreamlike, immaterial quality, centred on the many links between people and technology, and invites visitors to come close to each work and listen to the stories of its characters. The recordings show a bright gallery with wooden ceilings and a glass wall opening onto the sea, where visitors' avatars gather and talk. Large black panels carry his white digital sculptures: a woman wearing a virtual reality visor, her hands curved around an invisible object, and a cracked egg revealing a baby. Three-dimensional figures stand in the space, among them a female torso with a fetus and a full-length version of the visor-wearing woman by the window.

The exhibition brought together sculptures born as physical casts and works conceived as digital, in a setting where the public met the artist as avatars. For Clapis, who had recently begun releasing his work as NFTs, it was a first overview of his practice built entirely for the metaverse, presented by a museum dedicated to digital art.

Sources

• Clapis Retrospective — MoCDA – Museum of Contemporary Digital Art