Galleria Civica di Modena – Sale superiori – Palazzo Santa Margherita
Corso Canalgrande 103, Modena – 28 April / 22 July 2018
Curated by Chiara Dall’Olio and Daniele De Luigi
The title of the exhibition comes from the section “Window on Utopia” of the book Walking Words by Eduardo Galeano (1940-2015). The writer from Uruguay describes utopia as a horizon that is never reached, that recedes before us with every step we take. To the question “what is the purpose of utopia,” he replies “to cause us to advance.”
The revolutions of the 20th century outlined a dual nature of utopia: partly a concrete dream, the hope for change, faith in the future; and partly the reversal into dystopia, a model of society that represses freedoms and brings betrayal and despair.
The exhibition explores the tension between these two dimensions through a selection of photographs and videos by Italian and international artists, taken from the collections managed by Fondazione Modena Arti Visive and belonging to Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Modena and the City of Modena/Galleria Civica, specifically the photography collection launched in 1991 with the donation of the holdings of the artist and photographer from Modena Franco Fontana.
The works are put into dialogue with a series of images chosen from the archives of Magnum, the prestigious agency founded in New York and Paris in 1947 by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, George Rodger and David (Chim) Seymour.
The Magnum photos, printed in large format, show moments of revolt that have become milestones in collective awareness, seen through the eyes of famous photojournalists like Abbas, Bruno Barbey, Ian Berry and Alex Majoli, such as 1968 in Paris and Tokyo, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the civil rights movement in the United States, all the way to the Arab Spring.
