Saggio sulla cecità
curated by Daniele De Luigi
This exhibition was first previewed in 2017 in Tirana, as a special project of the 18th Biennial of Young Artists from Europe and the Mediterranean. It is the result of the Mediterranea Youth Photo residency program, to which Federica Landi (Italy), Emeric Lhuisset (France) and Ana Catarina Pinho (Portugal) took part between Reggio Emilia, Paris and Braga, with the goal of working on a common project inspired by the Mediterranean Sea.
Departing from José Saramago’s novel Blindness, a metaphor for our contemporary society in which people “watch and yet do not see”, the three artists propose their shared view on the role that photography can play in understanding the phenomenon of immigration and about the difficulty of achieving authentic knowledge and memory, starting from images.
In The Death of Tiresias, Federica Landi worked with the African women rejected by the Italian villages of Goro and Gorino in 2016, creating devices that invite us to think about media exposure and the limits of vision.
Emeric Lhuisset’s L’autre rive shows us the daily life in Europe of refugees he met years before in war zones, by using cyanotype prints, destined to fade away, just like it happened with other friends who were lost at sea.
Ana Caterina Pinho’s The Middle Sea highlights the hidden tensions that run through the waters of the Mediterranean Sea, as well as the intertwining of stories and routes of migrants, whose tales she personally collected.
Mediterranea Youth Photo is an international project of photographic residencies promoted by the Municipality of Reggio Emilia and BJCEM – Biennial of Young Artists of Europe and the Mediterranean in collaboration with Circulation(s) – Festival de la Jeune Européenne Photographie in Paris, Festival Encontros da Imagem of Braga and Palazzo Magnani Foundation / Fotografia Europea. The initiative has been co-financed by the Presidency of the Council of Ministers – Department of Youth, National Civil Service and by ANCI.
The artists were selected by Daniele De Luigi, Giovane Fotografia Italiana curator; Ângela Ferreira, former art director of Encontros da Imagem (Braga, Portugal), Carine Dolek, curator of Circulation(s) (Paris, France).
