Italy 2019

Title: “Neither Nor: The challenge to the Labyrinth”
Commissioner: Federica Galloni, Director General DGAAP
Curator: Milovan Farronato
Artists: Enrico David, Chiara Fumai, Liliana Moro

The subtitle of the project alludes to “La sfida al labirinto” (The Challenge to the Labyrinth), a seminal essay written by Italo Calvino in 1962 that has been the inspiration for “Neither Nor”. In this text the author proposed a cultural work open to all possible languages and that felt itself co-responsible in the construction of a world which, having lost its traditional points of reference, no longer asked to be simply represented. To visualise the intricate forms of contemporary reality, Calvino turned to the vivid metaphor of the labyrinth: an apparent maze of lines and tendencies that is in reality constructed on the basis of strict rules. Interpreting this line of thought in an artistic context, “Neither Nor” — whose Italian title, “Né altra Né questa”, already uses the rhetorical figure of the anastrophe to disorientate — gives agency to a project of ‘challenge to the labyrinth’ that takes Calvino’s lesson on board by staging an exhibition whose layout is not linear and cannot be reduced to a set of tidy and predictable trajectories. Many generous journeys and interpretations are offered to the public, whom the exhibition entrusts with the chance to take on an active role in determining the route they will take and thereby find themselves confronted with the result of their own choices, accepting doubt and uncertainty as inescapable parts of understanding.