Mantua is a small border town, west of the capital Havana, which, according to a legend, was founded by a group of Italian sailors - there are many surnames, mostly Genoese, among the inhabitants of the country - shipwrecked of a brigantine named 'Mantua'.
Around this anecdote, halfway between myth and reality, the photographic story of Paolo Simonazzi has developed, dealing with the olvid, or that feeling of forgetfulness, made up of symbols, small intimate totems, house interiors, posters, abandoned buildings, which preserve icons and wall paintings of a perhaps still romantic socialism, inserted in the current historical context in which Cuba, once the economic embargo is over, will be forced to open up and, necessarily, to change.
With his shots, Simonazzi captures this moment of suspension, between what the island's recent history has already handed down and what has yet to be written, in line with his stylistic code which led him to document the poetics of small worlds , or that condition of the spirit that is experienced only by living in the province, it doesn't matter if Emilian or Cuban.
“Leonard Cohen – says Simonazzi himself – claims that when an author composes a song, he always composes that song. In fact, even in Mantua I found attitudes similar to distant places in space, which I had previously photographed. I discovered the symbols that have characterized the culture and education of that country”.
Mantua, Cuba is a project organized by BAG GALLERY, a brand that represents the commitment to the contemporary, especially in the world of photography. After the Parma preview, the exhibition will travel to Havana in November on the occasion of the Italian Culture Week in Cuba.
The exhibition is organized by BAG GALLERY and Zeitgeist Art Exhibit Group, with the patronage of the Casa America Foundation and in partnership with #AImagazine, which presents a selection of 21 photographs by Paolo Simonazzi (Reggio Emilia, 1961), which are part of an unpublished project of over 40 images made on the Caribbean island, born from the collaboration with the writer Davide Barilli.
Image: Paolo Simonazzi_Mantua,Cuba_2015_Courtesy of BAG GALLERY_3
