Opening: 27th of September from 18.30
Via Sant’Agnese 18, 20123 Milan, Italy
The common thread within all the works shown is the concept of Identity, extremely changeable in our contemporary world, between globalization, multiculturalism, conflicts, wars, new communities and new membership groups.
Through the medium of photography Artists draw the dynamic and uncertain lines of an identity ever more varied and mobile, with the intent to show the countless possible portraits of it.
And “Identities” are revealed through the artist’s lenses , as in the cartesian assumption “Cogito ergo sum”- artists create and thus they exist through their art.
Giuseppe Palmisano’s female identities are inserted in a metaphysical landscape in which they appear to be neutral hidden shells, camouflaged among inanimate objects and tenuous walls. In a period of history where Identity is screamed to be heard, Palmisano chooses to silence it to keep its integrity from the hasty and approximate judgment of the external gaze.
Self portrait with father’s shoes is Kincso Bede’s manifesto, a young Romanian artist fascinated by the communist past of her homeland, the power of the leader Nicolae Ceaușescu, the control exercised by the security agency Securitate, and how this history is passed down across the generations.
Sofiya Chotyrbok’s imaginary takes form between self portraits, staged photographies, collages and archive images. Born Ukrainian, adopted Italian, Sofiya investigates Identity in the post soviet society in search of her origins. Home before dark is the fruit of several trips in her country of origin in order to stage a chruščëvka , a typical soviet apartment, with carpets, photographs and family heirlooms which shaped her fragmented memories.
The series il Viaggio gives Florence di Benedetto the possibility of a reflection on the detachment from every day life through a deep immersion in the sea of everyone’s dream. The search for identity is an escape into a dream world in which we may take refuge from it, once crystallized.
As a child growing up in Kyiv, Yelena Yemchuk was fascinated by the reputation of Odesa as a free place during Soviet times. The city seemed full of contradictions — 'acceptance but also danger. A place of jokes and characters, populated by outlaws and intellectuals.' She first visited Odesa in 2003 and returned in 2015 to begin to photograph the city and its inhabitants over a period of four years. At the time, the country was in the throes of a period of change and redefining its identity, and simultaneously Yemchuk was defining her identity and developing her own visual language and ideas.
The exhibition investigates the theme of belonging, the definition of identity from different points of view: through the reinterpretation of the female universe, the relationship between individuality and social roles, the reflections on peoples, history, resistance and resilience , until the victory of freedom that travels beyond, toward new forms of contemporary collectivity, beyond memories, in which new forms of inclusion combine with intimate and private spheres to generate a new idea of borderless Individuality.