From 2 May to 2 June 2024 Turin will host the first edition of EXPOSED Torino Foto Festival, the new International Festival of Photography in Turin. Referring back to one of the central topics in the Italian photographic tradition, for 2024 the Festival is dedicated to the theme New Landscapes – Nuovi Paesaggi, and proposes a reflection on the current evolution of the photographic medium and the main challenges and innovations in the world of the image, through a programme of temporary exhibitions, meetings, talks and events in the venues of Turin’s main cultural institutions.
“We wish to concentrate on an innovative and inclusive approach to attract a mixed local and international public, with a diverse programme that includes various approaches in photography: from classical to contemporary, cross-media, installations and performative photography. Cooperation and collectivity are key aspects – says Menno Liauw – and highlight the multidisciplinary and kaleidoscopic nature of EXPOSED. A range of visions, approaches, ideas and projects make the Festival, and thus also the city of Turin, an inclusive meeting point open to the world.”
“We are presenting projects that are often the result of long-term research on the social developments of a community. Such projects exceed the boundaries of aesthetics, but start exchanges, raise awareness and inspire social changes. We intend to show the impact art can have on our perception of the world, from local communities to global issues, through the lenses of many artists” – underlines Salvatore Vitale.
The programme of the first edition of EXPOSED lists over 20 temporary exhibitions, an artistic commission, two days of talks, an educational platform, a fair of independent publishers, meetings, screenings, portfolio readings and other events, enabled by the involvement in planning and production of the city’s main institutions, the independent organizations and the players of the city’s and international artistic landscape.
The programme spans from 2 May to 2 June with exhibitions produced by EXPOSED or organized in collaboration with partners: CAMERA – Centro Italiano per la Fotografia; Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea; Cinema Massimo – National Museum of Cinema; Cripta747; Ex Galoppatoio della Cavallerizza Reale – Paratissima; Fondazione Merz; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo; Fondazione Torino Musei with GAM – Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, MAO Museo d’Arte Orientale and Palazzo Madama – Museo Civico d’Arte Antica; Gallerie d’Italia – Torino; Mucho Mas!; Museo Regionale di Scienze Naturali; OGR Torino; Palazzo Birago, headquarters of the Turin Chamber of Commerce; Palazzo Carignano – Piedmont Regional Museums Directorate; Pista 500 of Pinacoteca Agnelli; Polo del ‘900; Villa della Regina – Piedmont Regional Museums Directorate; Witty Books.
At Binario 2 hall of OGR Torino, the collective exhibition coproduced by EXPOSED and OGR Torino, A View from Above, offers a vertical perspective as the main point of view. It explores how our gaze on landscape through photography has changed over the past decades, and how this has influenced how we control, design and model the environment we live in.
At the Polo del ‘900, the lead is Mónica de Miranda, the winner of the first edition of EXPOSED Grant for Contemporary Photography 2023, with As if the world had no West. The exhibition proposes the creation of new landscapes by researching metaphysically present but hidden ecologies in Angola, deconstructing the Western understanding of memory, history and territory.
At Palazzo Birago, headquarters of the Turin Chamber of Commerce, the exhibition Tender Loving Care by Kalina Pulit closely interfaces with the author’s short shown at Cinema Massimo halls belonging to the National Museum of Cinema. It focuses on a deep rethinking of the notion of belonging, on the dualism between public and private spheres, in a time when these boundaries are increasingly weak and blurred.
New trends in Italian and world photography are the main foci of the exhibitions at CAMERA – Centro Italiano per la Fotografia: the young South Korean artist Dongkyun Vak explores the tension between human beings, nature and technology in the Anthropocene in his show Heatwave – in collaboration with the Vontobel Art Collection; in the spaces in via Delle Rosine, visitors will find a project stemming from the cooperation with Chora Media and Lavazza, including work by Arianna Arcara, Antonio Ottomanelli and Roselena Ramistella on the landscapes of linguistic minorities in Italy never displayed before.
Queer Icons is a project by the Oslo Fotogalleriet including both an exhibition at the Ex Galoppatoio della Cavallerizza Reale – Paratissima, and a far-reaching public programme that celebrates the traditional Norwegian underground queer culture 50 years after the decriminalization of homosexuality, the appeal of life lived outside norms through democratic drive, parties and activism. This is done by telling life stories, gathered by the photographer Fin Serck-Hanssen and by the authors Bjørn Hatterud and Caroline Ugelstad Elnæs.
At the Gallerie d’Italia – Torino of Intesa Sanpaolo Dutch designer and researcher Simone C. Niquille presents Beauty and The Beep, a short shot with innovative tools centred on the co-existence between people, data and technological processes ensuing from the computerized vision of domestic robots. The author is inspired by the enchanted daily objects in the popular fairy tale The Beauty and the Beast, and enacts a scene with a humanized chair and its ironic and grotesque attempts to sit down.
SCREENINGS presents three works at the Cinema Massimo – National Museum of Cinema by Kalina Pulit, Michele Sibiloni and the collective Wild Alchemy Lab. Tender Loving Care by Kalina Pulit is a film on actual and metaphorical connections and relations. Grasshopper Republic by Michele Sibiloni and Daniel McCabe is a medium length film that examines the strange, beautiful and dangerous relationship between human beings and nature. Wild Alchemy Lab presents a series of AI short films and artworks from the archives of the collective’s journal.
With Non fiction, American photographer and architect Erin O’Keefe brings to the Museo Regionale di Scienze Naturali a project that explores the nature of spatial perception and the optical tools, as well as the unavoidable misalignment that the camera produces when it turns 3-D shapes and spaces into a 2- D image. Lebohang Kganye presents A Burden Consumed in Sips at Cucine storiche (historical kitchens) di Palazzo Carignano: a video retrace German photographer and painter Marie Pauline Thorbecke’s expedition (1911-1913) to Cameroon for the German Colonial Society. State of Emergency – Harakati za Mau Mau kwa Haki, Usawa na Ardhi Yetu by Max Pinckers can be seen at Palazzo Madama – Museo Civico d’Arte Antica: it is a fictional documentary by the photographer in cooperation with Mau Mau and Kenya war veterans, in an attempt to retrace and fill in the historical voids of the official colonial period. Villa della Regina hosts True Colors by Mathieu Asselin, that questions the ecological narrative of contemporary industry. The project draws inspiration from the Dieselgate case: in 2014 Volkswagen was shown to use software to circumvent air pollution tests on certain car models.
EXPOSED programme continues with coproduced exhibitions and shows developed in collaboration with institutions and independent spaces in Turin. Expanded, a project originating from the Collection of Fondazione per l’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea CRT, is coming to life in EXPOSED and will unite an exhibition in three chapters in a single coherent path at the venues of Castello di Rivoli, GAM – Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea and OGR Torino.
Expanded With at the Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, curated by Marcella Beccaria, presents works in which the photographic medium is the starting point for investigating different types of relationship with the landscape, with works by pioneers of Land Art, Arte Povera and Body Art. In Expanded Without (2 May – 31 July 2024) at Binario 1 hall of OGR Torino, the focus is instead on works where the image is produced without resorting to the traditional photographic medium: visitors will find installations, authentic experiential fields, within which the viewer becomes part of the image construction process.
Finally, Expanded – I Paesaggi dell’Arte at the GAM – Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Torino, curated by Elena Volpato, traces the Italian history of photography dedicated to art: from the first 19th-century documentation of the architectural landscape to the shots by Armin Linke.
The Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea will also host the exhibition called Paolo Pellion di Persano. La semplice storia di un fotografo, a first in gathering an important collection of the artist’s photographs, including many unpublished so far, conveying an extraordinary story that highlights the artistic vitality of Turin and its area.
Presented at the Fondazione Merz is the video installation Chimera (2022) by Lena Kuzmich, a non- binary artist who creates new visions and worlds by assembling different footage, set in a virtual, almost playful world, using various editing software. By examining queer ecology and non-binary life within nature, the artist questions what defines human beings as a species. The work is part of the exhibition Sacro è, in which the languages of a young generation of artists (Tiphaine Calmettes, Matilde Cassani, Giuseppe Di Liberto, Quỳnh Lâm, Lena Kuzmich, Tommy Malekoff, Lorenzo Montinaro, GianMarco Porru) suggest a reflection on the concept of “sacred”, which is researched and explored in its everyday dimension, emphasising the wonder of existence and the poetry that is present in everyday life.
Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo presents a performance for the opening of Je Vous Aime, Diana Anselmo’s first solo. The deaf artist and performer researched archives in Turin and Paris suggesting a dialogue between video and photographic documents. The collective exhibition When We Were Old. Opere dalla Collezione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo is a selection of photographic works by Anna Gaskell, Larry Johnson, Sherrie Levine, Tracey Moffat, Collier Schorr and Wolfgang Tillmans. It consists of a series of considerations on youth as a space of legitimate autonomy and experience, avoiding a rhetoric of youth as an age projected only into the future.
Group is a video installation dedicated to the writer and painter Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. Finally, on 18 May the conclusive exhibition of the 18th edition of Young Curators Residency Programme Torino will open in Guarene.
The MAO Museo d’Arte Orientale hosts the screening of two films by Shahidul Alam, the Bangladeshi photo-reporter, writer and activist, who will also be leading a meeting with the Senegalese artist and activist Yasmine Eid-Sabbagh on 11 May.
The Pinacoteca Agnelli presents “Untitled” (1991), by Felix Gonzalez-Torres for EXPOSED: an image on the Pista 500 billboard, on the Lingotto building rooftop, branching out into the city with six advertising billboards. Untitled returns to Turin after being exhibited at the Castello di Rivoli in 2000: an invitation to reflect on how our perception of the city has changed and how its spaces can become places to share multiple perspectives and experiences.
Cripta747 will screen Cosmic Radiation by the artist Graeme Arnfield. Across the Ocean in the Mucho Mas! space is the installation by the Vietnamese artist Hiền Hoàng that uses rice to address German immigration policy and its discrimination. Fabio Barile brings Works for a Cosmic Feeling to Witty Books, a collection of photographic works using the tools and instruments of science and philosophy to explore what Romain Rolland called an “oceanic feeling” in his 1927 letter to Sigmund Freud, referring to the feeling of being at one with the universe.
A series of meetings, educational activities and participatory events will complete the calendar, as well as symposia for professionals of contemporary photography: a lively and dynamic programme that EXPOSED has developed to involve both experts and enthusiasts, piecing together old and new languages.
On 3 and 4 May, from 10 am to 8 pm, the talk programme organized by the Artistic Directors will be held at the Cavallerizza Reale – Paratissima, at the Pinacoteca Albertina, at the Gallerie d’Italia – Torino and at the Cinema Massimo – National Museum of Cinema: two days of meetings thinking about photography and the world of contemporary images. Starting with the title of this first edition of EXPOSED New Landscapes – Nuovi Paesaggi, the talks will focus on four main themes: Ethics and the politics of representations; New landscapes: AI, technology and images; Circulation and photographic industry; Artist Talks: In Transition.
They will be led by the curators, the artists involved in the Festival and reference figures from the industry, and will be moderated by local and international journalists, photo-editors and professionals, so as to convey the role and growing impact of photography from different points of view.
Fotomuseum Winterthur presents the event CHEATED BY AN IMAGE at the city of Turin’s cultural hub Off Topic: with live music, it explores the ways in which we are seduced, fascinated and deceived by digital and online photography. During the evening, several personal testimonies will reveal the different ways in which we are deceived by images: from dating app profile pictures to war fakes in Ukraine, from the seductions of online e-commerce platforms to endless doomscrolling on TikTok. CHEATED BY AN IMAGE is part of Fotomuseum Winterthur’s ongoing research project [PERMANENT BETA] THE LURE OF THE IMAGE, which is accessible on the online platform www.permanentbeta.network and will end with a group exhibition in 2025.
On 3 and 4 May at CAMERA – Centro Italiano per la Fotografia, jointly with Fotofestiwal Lodz, EXPOSED PHOTOMATCH has organized two days of open networking events and public presentations, breathing new life into the traditional formula of portfolio reviews. The idea comes from a democratic and inclusive model – free of charge – where experts and artists share a space and put forward their experiences, their work and motivations.
Yet more, and thanks to the collaboration of EXPOSED and SPRINT Milano, the coming edition of the art book fair dedicated to independent publishers and artists’ books will take place at Binario 3 hall of the OGR – Torino from 2 to 5 May 2024, an opportunity to welcome a selection of 20 local and international publishers, with some of the cutting-edge contemporary research in the area.
As part of TORINO FUTURA, a project coordinated by the Department of Cultural Policies and the Department of Education and Youth Policies, which connects and enriches the activities of the city’s main events aimed at the younger generations, EXPOSED is launching a collaboration with IED Torino in the development of Pop-up Photo Studio. This project invites the public to become the protagonists of a collective action to tell the faces of the participants in the first edition of EXPOSED through the medium of photography. On the occasion of the inauguration, young students from the Photography Course and from high schools will welcome those who wish to have their portraits taken in an en plein air studio open to all, set up at one of the festival locations.
In order to promote the positive effects of collaborations between research and education institutions and cultural organizations, the Festival presents the project for an experimental exhibition created and produced in collaboration with the Master of Arts in Interaction Design of the University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland (SUPSI) and the Recontemporary gallery in Turin. This exchange stems from the common goal to push the boundaries of the conversation on contemporary image creation through creative technology, asking what is the definition of photography in the era of automation and what are the implications of artificial agents creating images. For one month, the Recontemporary gallery will host interactive installations that merge the digital and physical realms, stimulating reflections on contemporary concepts such as non-human photography, networked images and AI.
Furthermore, throughout EXPOSED, the city will offer a vast photographic offer of the highest level. Once again, we will have THE PHAIR (3-5 May 2024), the yearly photography fair in its 5th edition that this year will take place at the Sala Fucine of OGR Torino, with over 50 European galleries.
The scheduled programme of the city’s cultural offer also includes exhibitions devoted to the masters of photography, such as Robert Capa e Gerda Taro: la fotografia, l’amore, la Guerra at CAMERA – Centro Italiano per la Fotografia, and Luigi Ghirri. Rosso Ferrari at the Museo dell’Automobile, an exhibition that retraces the steps of one of the foremost Italian designers and the work devoted to the historical brand name. A talk to gain a better insight on the topic will be held on 16 May.
At the Gallerie d’Italia – Torino, Cristina Mittermeier. La grande saggezza is the first retrospective in Europe dedicated to the photographer, marine biologist and activist, while Non ha l’età. Il Festival di Sanremo in bianco e nero 1951-1976 presents a series of photos from the Intesa Sanpaolo Archivio Publifoto of the Festival’s off-stage shots from the years when it was held at the Sanremo Casino.
For the 700th anniversary of Marco Polo’s death the MAO Museo d’Arte Orientale hosts Tradu/izioni d’Eurasia Reload, a new presentation of the exhibition describing the fascinating journey of art, culture and tradition from the Far East to the Mediterranean through a new selection of ceramics, fabrics, metals and manuscripts.
The exhibition called LIBERTY. Torino Capitale held at Palazzo Madama – Museo Civico d’Arte Antica describes Turin’s pivotal role in the establishment of Liberty with about 100 works.
PAV Parco Arte Vivente will host Car Crash. Piero Gilardi e l’arte povera, an exhibition that researches Piero Gilardi’s (Turin, 1942-2023) work in the Nineteen Sixties.
At the Pinacoteca Agnelli, in addition to the work by Felix Gonzalez-Torres, two new works by artists Rirkrit Tiravanija and Finnegan Shannon will be installed at the Pista 500. In the interior exhibition spaces, in addition to the Permanent Collection, the exhibitions Form Form SuperForm and Lucy McKenzie e Antonio Canova. Vulcanizzato continue.
The Museo Nazionale del Risorgimento Italiano and Unione Industriali Torino present Paesaggi industriali. Un viaggio nelle trasformazioni urbane di Torino, a storytelling through images by Mauro Vallinotto illustrating the complexity of the transformations that have affected Turin and the major municipalities of the metropolitan area over the last half century.
Fondazione Mamre proposes an unpublished account of Iran: IRAN. PAESAGGI UMANI E URBANI Fotografie is a project in collaboration with Claudio Silighini, a photographer and photojournalist working on social issues and countries with internal conflicts.
The Associazione Barriera presents the exhibition No Gatekeepers For My Heart by Franko B, an artist linked to punk and queer arenas and concerns since the 1990s. His work embraces performances, photography, sculpture, installation and action in the public space.
Photography will take prime place also in the refurbished Flashback Habitat space with three solo exhibitions belonging to the project Insurrezioni. Fotografie di una protesta. Tre storie di attivismo, tra giornalismo e fotografia.
The independent space Quartz Studio will host a solo of the German photographer Ingar Krauss, including work so far never exhibited on Italian landscapes.
Paratissima will present the third edition of Liquida Photofestival at the Cavallerizza from 2 to 5 May, analysing the state of contemporary images.
JEST and ARTECO present Altra versione dello stesso paesaggio, a project by Arianna Arcara resulting from a residency in the Susa Valley and specifically at the Pinacoteca G.A. Levis. The residency is open to photographers and artists and aims at creating new narratives based on the substantial body of work by landscape painter Giuseppe Augusto Levis.
During EXPOSED several other activities for citizens will be organized to increase the general participation, starting from the award for the best shot of the Luci d’Artista that lit up the neighbourhoods during the Christmas festivities (which will be awarded by the Mayor during the festival days), up to appointments in the run-up to the second edition.
(from the press release)
EXPOSED Torino Foto Festival. TORINO.FOTO.FESTIVAL,Turin, various venues May 2 – June 2, 2024
images: (cover 1) RT-Bosch EDC17C46_M_Board, (2) Tabita Rezaire, «Satellite Devotion», 2019. Installation view, arebyte Gallery, London. Image: Christopher MacHinnes. Courtesy the artist (3) Dan Graham, «Asilo per bambini / Children’s Day Care», 1997 – 2000 © Property of Fondazione per l’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea CRT, loaned to Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea (4) Roselena Ramistella from the series «Brezi» (2024 – in corso) © the Artist (5)Teresita Fernàndez, «Cascata /Waterfal»l, 2000 © Property of Fondazione per l’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea CRT, loaned to Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea (6) Remo Salvadori, «L’osservatore non l’oggetto osservato/ The observer not the object observed», 1981-2003 © Property of Fondazione per l’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea CRT, loaned to GAM – Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Torino (7) Laura Cinti,« AI in the Sky», 2024 © C-LAB (8) The Phantom Menace, Graeme Arnfield (9) 008_040_040_04, Blanc Glacier – RENAULT (10) Hiwa K, View from Above, 2017, Courtesy Kow, Berlin and the artist (11) Felix Gonzalez-Torres, «Untitle» (1991) ©Estate Felix Gonzalez-Torres, courtesy Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation, (12) Arianna Arcara, dalla serie Té, Tèins, Ten, Tén, Tens (2024 – in corso) © the Artist
