Artist
Paolo Ciregia
Paolo Ciregia (b. 1987) is an Italian artist. After experience as a reporter at the forefront of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, in the last five years his artistic research has been focused on Ukraine context, manipulating and reworking his personal archive in a new way. Investigating and deconstructing both archives symbols and language, Ciregia aims to reveal the atrocities behind the war, destroying the propaganda patina through installations and sculptures. His work has been exhibited internationally in solo and group exhibitions. Among the major prizes are Winner of Talent FOAM Amsterdam 2016, Winner of “LOOP, Giovane Fotografia Italiana”, Festival Fotografia Europea 2017, “Honorable jury Mention” at Premio Francesco Fabbri 2016, TU35 at the Museo Pecci in Prato 2017, Winner of Leica Talent 2012.
Perestrojka
We live in a society in which our visual perceptions are bombarded all the time. Every single day in front of our eyes a huge amount of pictures of war and devastation flows, and we do not seem to feel any kind of feelings about them - we no longer “see” them. The bodies and the faces we keep on absorbing are turning us into alleged unaware voyeurs, and still we remain accustomed to pictures that neither offend us nor urge us to reflect. The paradox of that is we are driven to reflect only when a picture doesn’t show all those war-related elements, such as dead bodies or weapons.
With the reportage photographs of my private archives, shot during four years to document the Ukrainian war – from the riots in Maidan Square, to the parting of the Crimea, to the war in Donbass – I reconstruct such events with overlaps, cuts and corrosions. The aim is to create a different iconographic repertoire, to revise and to change the way to tell the war, without erasing the historical and cultural roots of such events. A work that tastes Soviet with echoes of constructivism.
A language that speaks “Perestroika” (Russian for “restructuring”), that refers to the restructuring of the Soviet political and economic system during the 80’s, that aimed to do reforms and to soften the Soviet regime. However, these efforts failed and led the Soviet regime to an end. That probably marked the starting point of the current tensions in Ukraine. Another failure has also been the unethical way to talk about war: so that a new approach, able to stir up people’s feelings, is very much needed.
The second concept behind Perestroika is “Glasnost” (“openness”): that was about the (alleged) fight against corruption, and about freedom of expression. This same transparency is, almost literally, expressed by the artist via deleting the most improper elements of the photographs of war, i.e. the ones we are mostly accustomed to; as a paradox, censorship is used as powerful means of social condemnation. The bodies, already lifeless, are deprived of their own image, the latter being empty and anesthetized; the two- dimensional cut offers a three-dimensional perception, its weight and physical space hidden behind this void, a white shape that cannot leave us uninterested..
Text by Giulia Guidi
Domenico Camarda (La Spezia, 1990) is an Italian artist.
http://www.domenicocamarda.com
Born in La Spezia in 1990, after his bachelor’s degree in Communication at the University of Bologna, he attended an MA in Photography and Visual Design at NABA/Forma in Milan. In the autumn of 2014 he worked at Pierre Von Kleist Editions, and Pedro Alfacinha Gallery, both based in Lisbon. During this experience he learned and deepen his interest in author photography and art publishing.
In 2015, he lived and worked in London for Amelia Troubridge, as assistant photographer, curating the editing and the layout of her last publications. He currently lives in Turin where, after having collaborated for MeMo Mag, he works as freelancer.
Camarda’s artistic practice focuses on and explores themes such as the construction of identity, and collective phenomena that affect and define the lives of each single individual. Creating a series of dreamlike and suggestive images, he wants to ask questions and trigger reflections, rather than giving simple answers.
Francesca Catastini (Lucca,1982) is an Italian artist.
She holds an MA in Photography and Visual Design from the New Academy for Fine Arts in Milan.
Her work is mainly about combining: images with images, texts, or other objects, in a no-ladder like interaction, aiming at transcending the idea of separation, in order to experience different levels of analogies. People are generally attracted by the challenge of interpreting the evidence, but our understanding of the pure origin of images is often vague exactly as ambiguous is the knowledge we have about the derivation of many words. What fascinates Catastini the most is exactly this exercise of the mind, which aims at “filling a gap”, drawing from our culture, knowledge, and past experiences. She is attracted by the connection between optical and apical perception. Unlike touch, vision often implies a sort of distance and it represents the sense which is more suitable for abstracting things. In 2016 her book "The Modern Spirit Is Vivisective” won the ViennaPhotoBookAward. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including Plat(t)form 2017, Fotomuseum Winterthur; Fotografia Europea, Reggio Emilia and other institutions.
Paolo Ciregia (1987, Italy) is an Italian artist.
After experience as a reporter at the forefront of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, in the last five years his artistic research has been focused on Ukraine context, manipulating and reworking his personal archive in a new way. Investigating and deconstructing both archives symbols and language, Ciregia aims to reveal the atrocities behind the war, destroying the propaganda patina through installations and sculptures. His work has been exhibited internationally in solo and group exhibitions. Among the major prizes are Winner of Talent FOAM Amsterdam 2016, Winner of “LOOP, Giovane Fotografia Italiana”, Festival Fotografia Europea 2017, “Honorable jury Mention” at Premio Francesco Fabbri 2016, TU35 at the Museo Pecci in Prato 2017, Winner of Leica Talent 2012
Irene Fenara (Bologna, 1990) is an Italian artist.
https://irenefenara.squarespace.com/
Her research focuses on the way of seeing and practicing observation on images. She reflects on linguistic devices and she uses optical and electronic instruments of various kinds, from Polaroid to surveillance cameras, often in an improper manner and transgressing their basic function. It becomes an instrument for observing the world, in the search for a slight poetic sense. The act of vision is the central element of her work that declines in her latest research on optical devices, often used as instruments of control, bringing attention to the always reversible overturning between who observes and who is observed. Her work has been exhibited in art galleries and public institutions, such as Fondazione Prada Osservatorio (2016), Fondazione Fotografia Modena (2017), P420 (2017), MAMbo - Museo d'Arte Moderna di Bologna (2018), Palazzo delle Esposizioni (2018), Fondazione Francesco Fabbri (2018) e Kunst Merano Arte (2019).
Giaime Meloni (Cagliari, 1984) is an Italian artist.
He is a visual researcher with a PhD in Architecture, currently living between two islands: Ile-de-France and Sardinia. The aim of his work is to explore the role of photography as a sensible instrument to narrate the space complexity. His research has been published in various publications (MAM Saint Etienne, INTRU). Giaime Meloni takes part in several International Conferences (CCA, FAUP), and also participate in national and international exhibition (Ritmo Indipendente, Pavillon de l'Arsenal). In 2017 he was shortlisted for Premio Graziadei with his long-term project Das Unheimiliche. He teaches photography as an instrument of the making of the architectural design between France and Italy. Her practice conceives an act capable of questioning the complex nature of places.
Giangavino Pazzola (Sassari, 1981) is Associate Curator at CAMERA - Italian Center for Photography