The Exhibitionist is partnering with the Artissima art fair for the 2017 iteration of Artissima Live, which invites international publications to be in residence during the course of the fair,
to publish about the art, programs, and events taking place over the course of four days in the city of Turin, Italy. Alongside the editors of ATP Diary (Milan), Artdependence Magazine (Antwerp), Aujourd’hui Magazine (Lisbon), Fruit of the Forest (Milan and Miami), and Kabul Magazine (Milan), The Exhibitionist will publishing columns, essays, and interviews highlighting the work of curators, artists, and others involved in Artissima 2017. As a journal focused on curatorial practice and the history of exhibitions, The Exhibitionist will aim to examine various forms of curatorial labor visible at the fair, consider the historical contexts that the fair itself aims to reconsider, and think about the art fair as a particular form of exhibition.
Here, curator and art historian Vittoria Martini elaborates on the Deposito d’Arte Italiano Presente, a curated section conceived for Artissima 2017. Organized by Martini and Ilaria Bonacossa, Artissima’s Director, Deposito d’Arte Italiano Presente reconsiders the history of Italian art since 1994, the year in which Artissima was founded. Through works by 124 artists made in the past twenty-three years, Deposito d’Arte Italiano Presente offers an object-based archive of contemporary Italian art. Through a series of four texts published over the course of the fair’s four days, Martini will explore the art historical context of Turin, the legacy and influence of Arte Povera on the Italian scene, and Artissima’s role as a catalyst within contemporary Italian art since the 1990s.
—
Part One: Turin as Context
“the future…is to be found in a sensivity to how the coincidence of works of art and other conditions (temporal, geographic, historic, discursive and institutional) locate a project and how that ‘location’ can be used to articulate a project that is respectful of its artworks and speaks to its viewers.”
– Elena Filipovic, The Global White Cube
You do not end up in Turin by chance: you plan to come here. Turin possesses a combination of factors that are hardly repeatable elsewhere, making it a required destination for anyone who works in contemporary art. First of all, it is one of Italy’s major cities, and one of the richest in historical, scientific, and artistic museums of national relevance. Another particularlity lies in its geographical position: Turin is located at the foot of the Alps, just a few kilometers from France and, most importantly, in the region that is the cradle of quality wine and food culture—this alone makes it a tourist destination.
