Mafia mapping
Varese [IT]
several locations
2016
photo reportage and exhibition
with Libera -Varese-
commissioned by IFC - Unipol Agency
#MappingMafia is a photographic exploration of the assets confiscated from the mafia in the Varese area. The exhibition does not have the aim of revealing the assets confiscated from the mafia in a voyeuristic way, but wants to bring out the everyday landscapes in which these assets are contained.
The photographs cut out some urban sections: those streets that we frequent, more or less, habitually and within which there are goods confiscated from the mafias.
The tangible demonstration of a presence: the confiscated property, in fact, can be considered as a litmus test of urban decay and lack of urbanity.
The gaze of the photographer is a gaze from the ground that tries to intercept those places - this is the sense of the shots - where the city is weak. Those places where the supervision of citizens is less attentive. These are in fact those places where you don't stay, but where you flow by, often with the distracted gaze of someone who walks through their city every day thinking they know it.
“Deaf, inert cities contain the seeds of their own destruction. But lively, diverse, intense cities contain the seeds of their regeneration, with the energy sufficient to drive the problems out of themselves” this is the hope of Jane Jacobs, because we must never forget that the city is made by people, day after day, step by step.
Mapping Mafia in 2016 made its debut as a parallel exhibition to Ordinary / Extraordinary / Incognito at the IFC Art Space and then became an OFF traveling exhibition which was hosted by:
porticoes of Palazzo Estense, Varese
Space Vitamin C, Varese
Gagarin Circle, Bust A.
Share shop, Varese
Tennis Bar Villa Toeplitz