There is no more central theme than that of immigration, of people who meet and change places, moving from one continent to another, than Africa. And it is central not only because everyone has an opinion on it, because everyone knows that an informal summit of the heads of state and government of the countries affected by the issues of asylum flows and requests will meet in Brussels on Sunday, but because everyone is involved, at all levels.
The National Museum of XXI Century Arts in Rome, commonly known as MAXXI, is hosting two exhibitions which present the vitality of the African artistic and cultural scene and which offer a reflection on the contradictions, open wounds and hopes of a continent intertwined with Europe. "In this moment of closure, not only of the ports, but in general, we try to keep the doors open and transmit hope, resilience and the possibility of living together", commented Giovanna Melandri, President of the MAXXI Foundation, at the press conference.
The first exhibition African Metropolis. An imaginary city, curated by Simon Njami and co-curated by Elena Motisi, is hosted from 22 June to 4 November 2018. This project was strongly desired by Giovanna Melandri, with the aim of following the path already taken by the Museum of continuing to see the art and culture as instruments of dialogue and cultural diplomacy: "it is an opportunity for us to meet and collaborate with the African communities present in Rome and who have been involved in an intense activity of intercultural mediation, interpreting the works on display according to their personal experiences”, explains Melandri. The Afropolitan intercultural mediation project develops in parallel with the exhibition and has Italian protagonists, second-generation young people and natives who describe the works, giving the visitor their point of view on the works.
The one hundred works that make up this exhibition – photographs, installations, sculptures, fabrics and videos – have been elaborated by 34 artists and embody the elements of an imaginary city, which is nobody's city, and in which everyone follows their own path to find each other. The curators have identified five metropolitan actions – Wandering, Belonging, Recognizing, Imagining and Reconstructing – which narrate an imaginary city that the viewer can interpret both in the physical and mental dimensions of a common contemporary metropolis.
The exhibition does not follow a specific path, an organic sequence, but it is the spectator who moves inside it with almost the same disorientation that a man experiences when he walks the streets of a new city, where everything is still a discovery and no wrong path . Elena Motisi, curator of the exhibition, explains: "the city can be approached from different points of view, the common thread that can help the visitor to orient himself in the exhibition is the sense of wandering, which is one of the metropolitan actions, following sounds, images and colours, all visual references that belong to the city”.
Some of the artists on display are: Youssef Limoud who with his work labytinth evokes a building collapsed on itself, Hassan Hajjaj who with an exclusive work for the museum The Library Lounge reproduces the space of a bookshop with a Moroccan atmosphere, Franck Abd-Bakar Fanny exhibiting the sequence of photographs My Nights Are Brither than Your Days, the result of his nocturnal walks due to jet-lag due to the long flight hours necessary to take him from Africa to Europe to America.
One of the most significant works is represented by an audio recorded by a French artist who, within a single tape, has brought together the sounds that are usually heard in the background in the metropolis and coming from four different African cities. It was easy to think of Rome, Milan, New York, because you listened to the voices, the cars, the situations that everyone experiences in everyday life and it doesn't matter if you were born in the north or in the south of the world, the sense of belonging to a place, stop feeling like a foreigner, the experiences of real life give it back.
The second exhibition is entitled Road to Justice and focuses on the history of Africa and the feelings, anger, pain, violence of a continent torn apart by wars and colonization, but also on hope, identity and memory. This exhibition is curated by Anne Palopoli and will remain on display from 22 June to 14 October 2018. On display are 11 works by 9 artists that are declined in photographs, videos, paintings and installations that cover three different temporal stages: present, past and future.
“No single person can liberate a country. Only a country can be liberated only if you behave as a community”, said Nelson Mandela. The city is an open space and as such is intended for the collaboration of all the peoples of the world.
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