Lara Favaretto came to the Gardner Museum in the month of January 2008 and spent time looking through materials in the Archives and learning about the people and culture of Boston. She purposely never went into the Museum during daylight hours, deciding instead to spend much of her time visiting the galleries at night. Favaretto returned a year later to see if she could film the demolition of the Gardner Carriage House, which was being taken down to make room for a new wing designed by Renzo Piano. Favaretto’s intention was to make a new work for her Momentary Monuments series, which she had started in 2005. Momentary Monuments was an investigation on the temporary nature of all monuments, and the futility of physical memorialization.
Lara Favaretto has worked with a range of media, including sculpture, photography, film, performance, and installation. Her works draw audiences in with their playful aesthetic quality, while simultaneously violently disrupting the space they occupy. Rooted deeply in conceptual research, Favaretto’s work is a consistent reminder of loss, degradation, and memory. Solo exhibitions of her work have been presented at the MCA, Santa Barbara (2018); Kunsthalle Mainz, Germany (2018); Nottingham Contemporary, UK (2017); Maxxi, Rome (2015); MoMA PS1 (2012); Sharjah Art Foundation, Dubai (2012); Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art, Turin, Italy (2005); and the Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art, Bergamo(2002). Favoretto’s work was selected for the Venetian Pavilion, 51st Venice Biennale (2005) and the 2016 Liverpool Biennial; she has also shown at the Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt (2014); the Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2006); and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2005). Favaretto lives in Turin, Italy.