Mediterranea Youth Photo - Saggio sulla cecità

Saggio sulla cecità (Essay on Blindness)

FEDERICA LANDI, EMERIC LHUISSET, ANA CATARINA PINHO

Exhibition curated by Daniele De Luigi

“I don’t think we did go blind, I think we are blind,
Blind but seeing. Blind people who can see, but do not see.”
José Saramago

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.

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).

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.

Federica Landi

THE DEATH OF TIRESIAS

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.
“Images are fundamental but they are not innocent. Every single image out there in the world represents a conception of the world” as Alfredo Jaar would state. I started perceiving images more as a blocking device to our sight, as if they produced a dust which obstruct our ability to focus, leaving space for a new form of blindness. Will we be ever able to grasp the essence of an event? To better understand the motivations and experience of an immigrant? And, more importantly: will our sight organ be ever able to connect us with some form of factual truth? Starting from these considerations I investigated the concepts of sight, obstruction, blindness and disappearance. I worked with the group of African girls who got rejected by the dwellers of Goro and Gorino towns in 2016, and whom underwent an overwhelming media circus. The installation consists of six devices made of photographic portraits, lights and mirroring surfaces. The portraits of the girls are installed in a way the audience can never look at them directly as a strong source of light hit their eyes obstructing their view. The only way for the audience to fully experience the portraits is by looking at their reflection onto a grey surfaces standing in front of them.”

Emeric Lhuisset

L’AUTRE RIVE

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.

“Having worked on numerous war zones, many of the friends I met in Iraq, Syria, or Afghanistan are now on the refugees route… Some arrived in Europe a few years ago, others never arrived and vanished at sea. I follow their journey through the messages we regularly exchange. I also remember the stories my grandmother used to tell me when I was younger, about her journey to North Africa, to leave from a Europe at war…. Today, Europe, which has always been a land of ethnic and cultural exchanges, seems amnesic. Emeric Lhuisset departs from these images belonging to the field of the news or of the spectacular. These impersonal images are too often used to justify populist discourses. He decided to meet his refugee friends throughout Europe and to photograph their everyday life. These photographs are printed on cyanotype and are not fixed. They evolve as the exhibit unfolds, and in the end will become blue monochromes … the blue of this sea in which so many vanish, but also the blue of Europe.”

Ana Catarina Pinho

THE MIDDLE SEA

The Mediterranean territory became probably the most vigorous place of interaction between different societies and has played a role in the history of human civilization, that has far surpassed any other expanse of sea.
The Middle Sea is a visual installation that invites the audience to reflect on the global migration crisis and the expectations on reaching Europe. This issue is represented in this project by two interactive pieces. From video installation to the documentation of travel testimonials of migrants, for whom the sea crossing is a common experience, this work addresses the tensions between territory and political conflicts.