Present Memories: On the Politics of Image-making (Tour)

Present Memories: On the Politics of Image-making (Tour)

Sat. Feb. 25  12-3:30pm (with lunch in between)
Magazzino Italian Art in Cold Spring, NY
Transportation from the Montclair State University campus via van (departure at 10AM), admission ticket, guided tour of the collection and lunch box will be offered to the first 15 interested parties
RSVP here

The Inserra Chair is pleased to offer a visit to Magazzino Italian Art, a center located in Cold Spring that hosts a unique collection of Arte Povera and regular cultural events about Italian contemporary art. On Feb. 25th, Magazzino will present Present Memories: On the Politics of Image-making, the fourth iteration of Pensiero Plurale, a series of programs curated by Ilaria Conti focused on issues of cultural and social justice, intersectional thinking, and the arts across Italy and the United States. The program will feature a morning conversation between artist Dawit L. Petros and scholar Teresa Fiore and an afternoon session with curator Mistura Allison. The program is introduced and moderated by Ilaria Conti.

Departure place and time: From Montclair State University campus (location TBA) at 10AM

12:00-1:15 Morning program 

Visual artist Dawit L. Petros discusses the research and methodologies through which his practice addresses the Italian colonial experience in the Horn of Africa, technological and cultural notions of modernity, and the triangulated relationship between European, African and North American mobilities. The artist’s presentation is followed by a conversation with Teresa Fiore, a scholar whose research focuses on Italian colonial legacies, transnational migrations, and spatial politics.

1:15:2:15 Lunch

2:15-3:30 Afternoon program 

Mistura Allison presents an experimental talk, sharing insights into her curatorial practice and introducing praise poetry (oríkì) as a methodology and concept under construction as well as a tool for visual analysis. Engaging multiple forms through the conceptual framework of “parallel gazing,” she addresses a collection of visual and written texts, haptic, and sonic exploring the role of the archive as a site of possibilities and imagining. The talk then transcends on the role of storytelling, call and responses, and multitudes in exhibition-making in contemporary Italian art.

Details about the time/docent of the dedicated guided tour of the Arte Povera collection at Magazzino will be shared directly with the registered attendees. If interested in attending the program independently from this tour, please see Magazzino link.

Organizer and moderator: Ilaria Conti 

As a New York-based curator, Ilaria’s work focuses on research-based artistic practices engaging with decolonial epistemologies and the relationship between institutional infrastructures, communal care, curatorial ethics, labor, and civic agency. Currently, she serves as Curator at the American Federation of Arts, advancing frameworks of decentralized and sustainable exhibition-making with a focus on contemporary art and social/cultural justice. Previously, she served as Research Curator at the Centre Pompidou for Cosmopolis, a multiyear platform devoted to research-based artistic practices and decolonial methodologies. She was Assistant Curator of the 2016 Marrakech Biennale and Samuel H. Kress Interpretive Fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, among other positions. She is an Advisor in the Visual Arts for the American Academy in Rome.

Ilaria is an Awarded Mentee of the 2021-2022 Association of Art Museum Curators Foundation’s Mentorship Program. Her curatorial work has been featured in projects presented at the Centre Pompidou, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Swiss Institute/Istituto Svizzero, Madre Museum, Fondation H, and La Nueva Fábrica Guatemala, among other institutions.

Morning presenters in conversation: Dawit L. Petros and Teresa Fiore

Dawit L. Petros is a visual artist, researcher and educator. His work is informed by studies of global modernisms, theories of diaspora, and postcolonial studies. Throughout the past decade, he has focused on a critical re-reading of the entanglements between colonialism and modernity. Petros installs photographs, moving images, sculptural objects, and sound work according to performative, painterly, or site responsive logics. Petros completed the Whitney Independent Study Program, an MFA in Visual Art from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and Tufts University; a BFA in Photography from Concordia University and a BA in History from the University of Saskatchewan. Recent exhibition venues include KØS Museum for Art in Public Space, Nørregade, Køge, Denmark; Ozangé Spanish Biennial of African Photography, Malaga, Spain; Oslo Kunstforening, Oslo, Norway; 13th Biennial of Havana, Matanzas; and Huis Marseille Museum of Photography, Amsterdam, NL.

His works have been recognized with awards including a Terra Foundation Research Fellow, Artist Residencies at The Studio Museum in Harlem, The McColl Center for Visual Art, and an Independent Study Fellowship at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Dawit L. Petros is an Associate Professor in the Department of Photography at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is represented by Tiwani Contemporary in London, UK and Bradley Ertaskiran in Montreal, Canada.

Teresa Fiore is Professor of Italian and the Inserra Endowed Chair in Italian and Italian American Studies at Montclair State University. The recipient of several fellowships (De Bosis, Rockefeller and Fulbright), she has held Visiting positions at Harvard, Yale, NYU, and Rutgers University. Her pluri-awarded book Pre-Occupied Spaces: Remapping Italy’s Transnational Migrations and Colonial Legacies (Fordham UP, 2017) is now available in an Italian edition (Mondadori/Le Monnier, 2021). Fiore is also the co-editor of the section “Italy and the Euro-Mediterranean ‘Migrant Crisis’” in the Journal of Modern Italian Studies (2018). Her numerous articles on migration to/from Italy and (post-)colonialism linked to 20th- and 21st-century Italian literature, theater, music and cinema have appeared in Italian, English, and Spanish both in journals and edited collections, including Transnational Italian Studies (2020).

An essay of hers about the artwork of photographer Dawit L. Petros is included in an exhibition catalogue published by Mousse (Spazio Disponibile, 2022). She is currently working on two research projects: “Food practices at the time of the Allied Landing in Sicily during WWII,” and the NEH-supported “Memoria presente: The Common Spanish Legacy in Italian and Latin American Cultures.” She directs a program of interdisciplinary events about Italian culture in a transnational perspective. See link for more information.

Afternoon presenter: Mistura Allison

Mistura Allison is an independent researcher, curator and, art historian based between London and Milan. She is the founder of ashikọ, a visually driven curatorial platform inspired by Africa and its Diaspora. Her work focuses on research-based practices engaging with the plurality of contemporary Afro-Diasporic visual and oral productions.

The program is organized and sponsored by Magazzino Italian Art with the partnership of the Inserra Endowed Chair for the dedicated tour.

Photo credits: Ilaria Conti by Daria Paladino, Dawit L. Petros by Dawit L. Petros, Teresa Fore by Arpi Pap and Mistura Allison by Eleonora Sabet

Short link: https://tinyurl.com/MagazzinoInserra