The exhibition at Palazzo Blu, from Saturday 23 April to Sunday 25 September, curated by Giorgio Bacci, presents a selection of original drawings, as well as photographs and videos, from the volumes Lamiere, Salvezza and storiemigranti, published by Feltrinelli Comics between 2018 and 2019.
The journey begins in Africa, in one of Nairobi's slums, Deep Sea, with the original drawings of Lamiere, the result of a collaboration between illustrator Lucio Ruvidotti and writers/journalists Danilo Deninotti and Giorgio Fontana. The book is an acute work of graphic journalism, presenting the reader with aid workers and kids 'made' of glue, nurses and children who have been HIV-positive since birth, but also glimpses the hope of rebirth on the horizon. The clear graphic line, the vivid and sometimes hallucinated colours, highlight one of the artist's technical peculiarities, combining ink and digital.
The second stage, a sort of tragic and contemporary Middle Passage, is the crossing of the Mediterranean Sea described in Salvezza (Salvation): the illustrator Lelio Bonaccorso, in 2019, together with the journalist Marco Rizzo, author of the script, embarks on the Aquarius, and documents through pencils, cameras and video footage, the rescue activities conducted by the ship in the open sea. The results of the investigation are published in a work (we are still talking about graphic journalism) of great emotional strength and graphic quality. The reader follows the events of the crew and at the same time learns the stories of the migrants rescued at sea, fleeing war and despair.
Following a series of thematic and iconographic associations, the desperate gazes of Salvezza become the memory-rich faces of the men and women of storiemigranti, born from the collaboration between the cartoonist Sio and the photographer Nicola Bernardi. Thirty-two migrants, each introduced by a photo-portrait that challenges the spectator to a direct confrontation, tell stories of various kinds, ranging from the tragic to the comic. A sort of Japanese haiku in which everyday life and surreality coexist, as if a common 'normality' were now unattainable, the stories create a multi-faceted and complex fresco, where dreams border on nightmares and terrifying memories.
The exhibition as a whole allows the visitor to approach sensitive current issues through the sensitive eyes of highly skilled artists and photographers, who dialogue with key art-historical themes. In the exhibition it is also possible to observe the variety of techniques used by contemporary illustrators (from watercolour to digital), and to study the entire artistic process, being able to admire not only the original plates (or prints taken from digital processing, as in the case of Sio), but also the preparatory material, consisting of notebooks, photographs and drawings.
For further information: https://palazzoblu.it/mostra/connessioni-raccontare-la-speranza/
