From February 14th to May 3rd, 2025, MACTE Museo di Arte Contemporanea di Termoli presents the Italian premiere of the project The Falcon of Karachi by Elisa Caldana.
The exhibition presents a series of works inspired by the elusive falcon called laggar, an endemic species in Pakistan, India, and Myanmar, which is slowly disappearing. Elisa Caldana, through many active collaborations between Europe and Pakistan, explores the relationship between wildlife and domesticity, as well as the processes behind developing wilderness within captivity. The falcon becomes a metaphor for thinking about power relations, pollution, and considering rights, not only for the humans.
The installation imagined for the museum’s rotunda, recreates the atmosphere of a domestic courtyard in Karachi, by constructing an environment in which the artworks are in dialogue both with the audience and with each other. There will be an area devoted to the film shot during many trips to Karachi, a series of textiles with patterns derived from feathered bodies and a bronze sculpture Untitled (Released), resembling a plaster mould depicts a choreography of hands holding a bird of prey in the moment immediately before its release back into the wild:a gesture that evokes the idea of void, but also of liberation.
Public Program
15 February, 4 pm
talk with artist Elisa Caldana and MACTE Curator and Director Caterina Riva. with book launch
2 May, 7 pm
talk with Aliki van der Kruijs, textile designer and Bruno Alves De Almeida, curator at Jan Van Eyck Academie
3 May, 3.30 pm (booking required)
Printmaking workshop with Elisa Caldana and Aliki van der Kruijs
Supported by the Embassy and Consulate General of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
The series of works of The Falcon of Karachi was made through the grant by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture under the Italian Council program (2023). The project has been produced in part with the support of the Mondriaan Fund, and was promoted by Jan van Eyck Academie (Maastricht), Vasl Artists’ Association (Karachi), West Den Haag (The Hague), SIC (Helsinki). The works are now in the permanent collection of MACTE.
Elisa Caldana (1986, Venezia) lives in The Hague, the Netherlands.
She studied at Städelschule in Frankfurt and at Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht, after her Degree in Visual Arts at IUAV University, Venice. Caldana works mainly with film, sculture and writing.
