Chiara Clemente

Polaroid by Waris Ahluwalia

text by BILL POWERS

CHIARA CLEMENTE, Our City Dreams

My first encounter with Chiara took place at the after-party toasting of her father, Francesco Clemente’s, 1999 Guggenheim retrospective. We all rode down-town to it in an overcrowded white limo. I remember watching Chiara and her sister dancing the night away in the lounge upstairs at Moomba as her parents and their friends shared a drink nearby. They were the kind of family — the kind of people — you move to New York hoping you’ll meet. It wasn’t until seven years later that I discovered Chiara’s talent as a filmmaker. She had made a short film about a project Mario Sorrenti and Richard Tuttle collaborated on, a fashion shoot inspired by the early days of the Ballet Russe. There was a freedom to her camera work, an unobtrusiveness, that I really…