An Interspecies Journey | Barbara Cammarata 2025
curated by Cesare Biasini Selvaggi, Patrizia Monterosso

The Exhibition
The exhibition takes visitors on a journey through a world founded on the possibility of an interspecies social pact, in which humans, animals, plants, and technology coexist within a symbiotic dimension. The relationship between the “similar” and the “different” thus becomes an opportunity for sharing and for ethical, moral, philosophical, and religious transformation, ultimately giving rise to a new order, as emphasised by curators Cesare Biasini Selvaggi and Patrizia Monterosso.
Mental Cabin
The first pavilion of the Brodbeck Foundation reconstructs Barbara Cammarata’s “mental cabin”, conveying her Buddhist-inspired, circular vision of existence and her research into Sicilian colour and light, initiated in 2012 following her return to Catania from England. This investigation developed through prolonged observation of light: warm and golden in Sicily, clearer and tending towards blue in England. The sphere, a symbol of perfection and wholeness, becomes a metaphor for absolute interiority (Alles ist Blatt, 2018) and for a universe in which each individual constitutes a microcosm connected to others. Cammarata’s practice conceives reality as a continuous flow of connections, in which each element retains its identity while participating in a larger system founded on reciprocity and solidarity among living beings.
Installations for Reconfiguring the Feminine and Motherhood
Cammarata’s installations reconfigure the feminine and motherhood, exploring the relationship between being a mother, a daughter, and an individual. Through elements from her personal trousseau, as in the bed of pins Feel What I Feel, the artist investigates the body, sexuality, and identity in relation to her cultural origins and the domestic sphere, a space of desires, conflicts, and tensions. The practice of “mending,” through needles, fabrics, and garments, becomes a metaphor for birth as both rupture and repair.
Pavilion II
The second pavilion develops the theme of the interspecies social pact, proposing the symbiotic coexistence of humans, animals, plants, and technology as a possible new ethical and cultural paradigm. The exhibition is structured around a monumental installation designed by the architectural studio ANALOGIQUE: a transparent gallery resembling a self-sustaining biosphere, defined by slender metal structures and immersed in lush vegetation. Portraits of hybrid creatures, half-human and half-animal, establish a reciprocal exchange of gazes with visitors, transforming vision into an instrument of interaction and of positioning oneself within the world.
Textile Sculptures
The pavilion also presents six sculptures from the Microorganism (2025) series, created using the clothing of Cammarata’s daughter, Frida. Preserved and transformed into new forms of life, the garments become the material for an evolving sculptural investigation. Emerging from the experience of motherhood and the sense of isolation the artist experienced during pregnancy, the series transforms that condition into an inner metamorphosis, inviting a renewed understanding of the feminine and motherhood through a different perspective.