Artists: Leone Contini, Adji Dieye with Silvia Rosi, Alessandra Ferrini, Muna Mussie
Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo and Biennale Democrazia in collaboration with Black History Month Florence present Memory Matters. The project offers a reflection on collective memory in public spaces through an exhibition project spread out around Parco del Valentino, and a series of meetings as part of the programme of the 2021 Biennale Democrazia. The history of Parco del Valentino, and the symbols and monuments that inhabit it to this day, are the subject of an investigation carried out by four art interventions, specifically commissioned to artists Leone Contini, Alessandra Ferrini, Muna Mussie, and Adji Dieye in collaboration with Silvia Rosi. The park, which has been hosting international and national exhibitions since 1884, is here analysed from different perspectives as a historic and symbolic space that produced a national identity narrative, in close connection with Italy’s colonial past. The project addresses the theme of monumentality and permanence, and it questions the space of construction and conservation of public memory by introducing aspects related to the invisible and the temporary.
Leone Contini’s intervention investigates cataloguing and exhibiting as processes of production of memory, as it remotely interacts with institutions of conservation, such as the Botanic Garden and the Museo della Frutta. Adji Dieye collaborated with Silvia Rosi to develop a reflection on the lexicon of propaganda and advertising in public spaces, working on historic photo archives as a starting point. Alessandra Ferrini evokes the park’s past as a place for political representation by presenting the public with her sound intervention, which winds through a series of stages, focusing on visible and invisible traces of the process of building a nation’s identity. Lastly, with her installation and performance, Muna Mussie suggests a reflection on private and collective memory, on the impermanence of monuments, and on the haze of history.
The curatorial project was developed by Biennale Democrazia and Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in collaboration with Black History Month Florence, an institutional network committed to promoting and producing research and content dedicated to Blackness in Italy. Memory Matters is part of Verso, a programme created and realised by Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo with the Department for Youth Policy of the Piedmont Region as part of the National Fund for Youth Policy.
