Curatorview [Alfredo Cramerotti]

Curated by Alfredo Cramerotti and organised by Fondazione Imago Mundi / Fondazione Benetton Studi e Ricerche

Temporary Atlas: Cartographies of the Self in the Art of Today

5 February – 29 May 2022

Curated by Alfredo Cramerotti

The exhibition presents an idea of mapping that is alternative to the traditional conception. We know that there are two maps – an objectively-driven mapping and an individually perceived one – after all, not every aspect of our environment or our life has the same value. Equally, there are cartographers-explorers and cartographers-artists.

The fourteen cartographers-artists of Temporary Atlas do not gaze exclusively on the outside but rather focus towards themselves, aiming to investigate their perceptions, identities, emotions, physical and mental sensations. They adopt the traditional approach to mapping (a representation of reality) but expand it along unconventional paths – identity, spirituality, subconscious, feelings or memories that interact upon each of us. 

Walking through the exhibition, the visitor realises that however an artwork can engage reality, and reality is understood beyond representation, it is also true that much depends on which criteria we adopt to manifest this relationship. What we read in a representation (cartographic or artistic) depends on what methods and rules we intend to follow in this reading. 
Temporary Atlas is an attempt to identify the fleeting border between these two extremes: a reading of the person who, in the midst of a global pandemic yet to be resolved, re-evaluates their own priorities. The exhibition aims thus to describe our emotional, political, aesthetic horizon. It explores, in other words, the visitors’ expectation that art can allow us to reflexively understand our daily reality.

Participating artists: Oliver Laric, Jeremy Deller, Paul Maheke, Matt Mullican, James Lewis, Kiki Smith, Walid Raad, Ibrahim Mahama, Otobong Nkanga, Rochelle Goldberg, Seymour Chwast, Enam Gbewonyo, Sanford Biggers and Sarah Entwistle.