Calori & Maillard

Artist duo since 2009. The collaboration between Letizia Calori and Violette Maillard combines backgrounds in architecture and film studies into a practice where the real and the surreal merge.

Letizia Calori (1986) and Violette Maillard (1984) work as artist duo Calori & Maillard since 2009.

Their collaboration combines backgrounds in architecture (Calori) and film studies (Maillard) into a practice where the real and the surreal merge, often with the infiltration of the absurd into a real situation. Their research is focused in observing and interpolating the relations between architecture and human body. Power systems and conventional behaviors are triggered and stretched through unexpected elements which find the escaping point in the irony of the counteraction.

In 2011 they obtain a MA in Visual Arts at IUAV, Venice, in 2012 they move to Frankfurt am Main where they deepen their research at Staedelschule, with professor Tobias Rehberger.

In 2013 they won the Ernst & Young Prize and Staedelschule Portikus e.V. grant. In 2014 they were artists in residence at Österreichische Skulpturenpark in Graz, in collaboration with the Joanneum Museum. In 2015 they received a grant from Heinz and Gisela Friederichs Foundation for the project L’Oiseau de Feu, a ballet for tower cranes. The same year they were selected by Fundación Botín, Santander as artists in residence. In 2016 they were awarded for the XIII edition of the New York Prize by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Italian Academy of Advanced Studies at Columbia University and they were artist in residence at ISCP, International Studio and Curatorial Program in New York. In 2017 they were assignee of the prize Panorami contemporanei – photography residencies in Italy, promoted by MiBACT and GAI and in 2018 they were part of the European Photography Festival with the project Energia Potenziale.

Calori & Maillard took part in several international shows, both in experimental spaces and institutions, such as MAMbo (Bologna), Palazzina dei Bagni Misteriosi (Milan), ISCP and Italian Cultural Institute (New York), MMK and Deutsche Filmmuseum (Frankfurt am Main), Villa Iris – Fundación Botín (Santander), Österreichische Skulpturenpark (Graz) and Moderna Museet (Stockholm).

For Paradisoterrestre they created the work Altabella 23 – Portare acqua al mare, a limited edition Murano glass vase inspired by Gavina shop designed by Carlo Scarpa in Bologna.