Edition #08 Reconstruction

From May 21st until July 4th, 2021, Young Italian Photography returns to Reggio Emilia: hosted in San Domenico’s Cloisters, as part of the European Photography festival, the collective exhibition RECONSTRUCTION, curated by Ilaria Campioli and Daniele De Luigi, presents the seven photographic projects selected by an international jury, composed by the above-mentioned curators together with representatives of the partner festivals.

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Young Italian Photography (Giovane Fotografia Italiana) is a project promoting the discovery and showcase of emerging photography talents in Italy. Currently in its eighth edition, the format includes a free-of-charge Open Call for artists under 35 years of age, who are invited to submit photographic series in line with the concept of each year. At the heart of the project is the idea of approaching photography as artistic research. An international commission selects the works that, receiving a financial reward, are produced and shown in a collective exhibition in the European Photography program in Reggio Emilia.
Since 2018, the Young Italian Photography Award is connected to a cash reward presented to the best artist out of seven finalists.

The theme of the eighth edition of Young Italian Photography is RECONSTRUCTION.
Reconstruction explores the ways in which artists can combine photography and imagination to attempt a more authentic understanding of reality, by breaking down and reassembling information and knowledge. They demonstrate that photography is able to take part to the cognitive process not only by by representing reality that can be observed through the eyes, but also, from that standpoint, by reconstructing reality in its multiple dimensions through imagination.

The works by Domenico Camarda, Irene Fenara, Alisa Martynova, Francesca Pili, Vaste Programme, Martina Zanin, Elena Zottola were selected by an international jury composed by Ilaria Campioli and Daniele De Luigi (Young Italian Photography’s curators), Shoair Mavlian (Photoworks Festival, Brighton), Chiara Fabro (Panioràmic Festival, Granollers – Barcelona) and Carine Dolek (Circulation(s). Festival de la jeune photographie européenne, Paris).

With Liquido, Domenico Camarda explores the concept of identity and how that of reality itself, has become amorphous and multiplicious. The result is an undefined world in which fixity was replaced by the potential for a range of shifting forms.

Irene Fenara highlights how technology changes the perception of the world. Three Thousand Tigers is an attempt to increase the digital fauna of an endangered animal and it paradoxically refers to the idea of saving a species. Working with a generative algorithm, Irene Fenara creates new images, big new animals, and new species born from the union of three thousand images of tigers, the number of living tigers, that maintain only some characteristics of the original animal.

Nowhere Near by Alisa Martynova explores the question of African migration in Italy. In the attempt of trying to tell a story of a person that leaves his land and pursues his dream physically moving from one place to another, overcoming barriers, Alisa Martynova discovered that the dream one is following is not always only a desire for a better future, sometimes it is a nightmare that appears when the dream doesn’t get fulfilled and remains a recurring vision of something that may never be reached.

Francesca Pili with #Abruxaus denounces the plague of arson that afflict Sardinia as well as many other areas of the planet. # Abruxaus was born on Instagram as an ironic complaint that refers to Sardinia's annual report about the arson cases during the summertime. The title is a curse in Sardinian language that means: "You can burn alive", directed towards arsonists. To concentrate the entire economic resources of a given place just on tourism is an irresponsible ploy to shade the long-standing discomforts and its real socio-economic potential. The project wants to detect the effects of the indifference policy on the environment and how a consumerist society creates a worn-out environment.

With The Long Way Home of Ivan Putnik, Truck Driver, the Vaste Programme collective (Leonardo Magrelli, Alessandro Tini, Giulia Vigna) investigates the mechanisms and the role of images by presenting the photographic archive of an imaginary character who drives across Siberia on a truck, giving life to a narration crossing the classic genres of photo album, travel diary and verofiction, through images and memories carefully selected by the authors.

I Made Them Run Away by Martina Zanin is a multi-layered story weaving together family images and photographs with texts written by the artist’s mother. It brings together memories from the past and present feelings to investigate the dynamics of contemporary relationships. The poetical and wistful writing clash with the torn family images, of which her mother has preserved only her figure, or the one of the daughter, tearing off all her ex-boyfriends, creating objects saturated with anger and loneliness. Every other picture is the artist’s inner reconstruction and expression of past feelings that become apparent in the present.

The Creation of the World is an Ordinary Day by Elena Zottola is a photographic piece that began in Estonia and took concrete form as a series of artistic postcards. Inspired by an ancient Baltic tale of the world's origins, it is based on the re-assembling of semantic fragments whose cosmogonic story is put concerning everyday objects' small sacredness, evoking that mystery of the nature of time and culture that has fascinated man since ancient times.

THE VENUE: THE CLOISTER OF SAINT DOMINIC
The complex of the Cloisters of Saint Domenic faithfully preserves the urban layout of the old Dominican convent established in 1233. It stands around two monumental courtyards. The subsequent development and the various uses modified the structural and architectonic impact. Originally a convent, became a military hospital from 1702, a barracks in the Napoleonic period and was used as stables in 1860.
The renovation work in the sixteenth century included the complete refurbishing of the old stone structure, replacing the wooden roof with cross vaults and adding Doric sandstone columns, the traces of which are still visible on the arches.
After the transformation of the complex into a military hospital in 1702, the small cloister needed restoring ; the construction in the church of a deep choir and two lateral opposing chapels involved the demolition of the south side of the courtyard.
Since 2005, the small cloister host the Robert Morris’s work Less Than, a permanent installation included in the contemporary art project Invitation to Luciano Fabro, Sol LeWitt, Eliseo Mattiacci and Robert Morris. From an idea by the artist Claudio Parmiggiani, the project has given life to a circuit of works conceived for the city in an expressive dialogue between the architecture of historical places and the art of our time.
Today the Cloisters of Saint Dominic host an exhibition space devoted to the languages of contemporaneity and youth creativity.

The Eighth edition of Young Italian Photography is part of the partnership of the municipality of Reggio Emilia with the municipality of Cortona, “Emerging Photography in Italy”. With the contribution of the Emilia-Romagna Region and REIRE srl. Co-financed by the Presidency of the Council of Ministers – Department for Youth Policies and the Universal Civil Service and ANCI – National Association of Municipalities of Italy as part of the “Synergies” public call.