To mark the launch of Alessandra Ferrini’s first monograph under the title “Like Swarming Maggots: Confronting the Archive of Coloniality Across Italy and Libya” (published by Archive Books and commissioned by Villa Romana), we welcome the artist herself with a special screening of her film “Gaddafi in Rome: Notes for a Film” (2022), on Thursday 31 October 2024, at 18:00, in MOMus-Museum of Contemporary Art in Thessaloniki. The screening is followed by an open conversation between the artist with curator and contributor of the book Daphne Vitali, and the public.
The film “Gaddafi in Rome: Notes for a Film” (2022, 59’, with English subtitles) is an essay film based on the analysis of real-time news documenting a meeting between Silvio Berlusconi and Muammar Gaddafi in 2009. Through the layering and interplay of text, archival imagery, media footage and amateur documentation, it dissects this event of diplomatic friendship to expose the continuing (neo)colonial relations between Italy and Libya. An initial iteration of the project was presented at MOMus-Museum of Contemporary Art in 2021, in the framework of the group exhibition “When the Present is History” curated by Daphne Vitali.
The book “Like Swarming Maggots: Confronting the Archive of Coloniality Across Italy and Libya” features Ferrini's long-term research on the colonial and neo-colonial relations between Italy and Libya. Through a critical engagement with the Italian ‘archive of coloniality’ and its structural violence, it brings together documentation of projects reflecting on positionality, censorship, translation, and the erasure of the genocide perpetrated by the Italians in Libya. The book includes a preface by Bassam El Baroni and contributions by: Tewa Barnosa, Adam Benkato, NiccolòAcram Cappelletto, Chiara Cartuccia, Sarri Elfaitouri, Amalie Elfallah, Khaled Mattawa, Maaza Mengiste, Barbara Spadaro, Daphne Vitali.
The project is supported by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture under the Italian Council program (2023).
With the support of Triangle-Astérides, Marseille; Depo Istanbul; L’Art Rue, Tunis; MOMus-Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki.
Admission free event.
The presentation and discussion will take place in English
Alessandra Ferrini is a visual artist, researcher and educator based in the UK. Questioning the legacies of Italian colonialism and Fascism, her work experiments with the expansion and hybridization of the documentary medium. Winner of the Maxxi Bvlgari Prize 2022, she has exhibited internationally, including at the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, curated by Adriano Pedrosa. She holds a PhD from the University of the Arts London.
Daphne Vitali is a curator and writer from Athens and Rome. She is a curator at the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens (ΕΜΣΤ). She has curated exhibitions internationally in institutions such as the Galleria Nazionale, Rome; Museo Novecento, Florence; DEPO, Istanbul; MOMus Thessaloniki; Rongwrong, Amsterdam; Fondazione Giuliani, Rome etc. She is interested in artistic practices that are rooted in social, political and ecological issues. Her recent curatorial practice has focused on research-based practices and the historiographic turn in contemporary art as a means of investigating and interpreting the present.