Edited by Kathryn Weir
arte’m, Napoli, 2024
“In the exhibition Utopia Distopia: il mito del progresso partendo dal Sud … a new critical perspective was proposed on the Madre collection — including works already part of it and others acquired by the foundation after the exhibition — in relation to how art produced in Naples, Campania, and southern Italy, from the 1960s to the present, has captured dramatic political and cultural transformations in real time. The curatorial approach also brought into dialogue the artistic sensibilities of southern Italian territories with those emerging from other ‘Souths’ of the world: together, they lay the groundwork for a reflection on our recent past, as well as on the possible parallels between it and that of other countries, other cultures.
Progress can wear the ambiguous face of economic prosperity — such as that which Naples experienced in the shadow of the Italsider steelworks in Bagnoli, photographed by Mimmo Jodice and permanently closed in 1992 — leaving in its wake a trail of toxins yet to be disposed of. At other times, it can emerge from the peripheries, as in the educational and pedagogical experiments that Riccardo Dalisi initiated — a genuine utopia — in the Rione Traiano district in the late 1960s.” — Angela Tecce