European Commission - 7th Framework Programme European Museums and Libraries in/of the age of migrations last updated: February 2015


Crossing Bodies – Postcolonial Visions

1-15 December 2012

Crossing Bodies – Postcolonial Visions
curated by Giulia Grechi, in representation of Routes Agency and in collaboration with MeLa Project

Part of Idee Migranti. Installazioni / performances / incontri

Rome, Italy | Museo Nazionale Preistorico Etnografico“Luigi Pigorini”



Idee Migranti (Migrant Ideas) is a section of the broader exhibition [S]oggetti migranti (20 september- 2 April 2012), held at the Museo Nazionale Preistorico Etnografico“Luigi Pigorini” in Rome. 
The exhibition [S]oggetti migrant is the closing event of the project READ-ME, Réseau européen des Associations de Diasporas & Musées d’Ethnographie created as a collaboration between the Museo “Luigi Pigorini”, the Musée royal de l’Afrique Centrale in Brussels, the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris, and the Museum für Völkerkunde in Vienna.
[S]oggetti migranti focuses on the migration undergone by the objects preserved in ethnographic museums
today, concentrating particularly on the various stories these carry, with the intent of bringing the objects of
the museum back to life. Within this exhibition the call for projects Idee Migranti (Migrant Ideas) was created in order to promote the dialogue between the museum and the public, to allow a confrontation with those who work on projects inherent to the themes of migration on the national territory.
Two of the projects selected from the call for proposals are curated and presented by two researchers involved in the MeLa Project, Annachiara Cimoli and Giulia Grechi and will be open to the public from the 1st of December till the 15th.

 

Giulia Grechi, in representation of Routes Agency, will be present with the project Crossing Bodies – Postcolonial Visions, which is articulated in an exhibition and a series of events. (See the Press release and the Program below).
The foundations of Crossing Bodies – Postcolonial visions lie in the consciousness that all identities (including our own, Italian) are radically migrant, due to History and the representations that it has created.
Being migrant means living in a boundary between here and everywhere else, before and after, inside and outside, between stories and memories.
Crossing Bodies – Postcolonial visions intends to "re-open" narrations of the past, of History and of memory, in order to let other points of view emerge, points of view that are many times obscured; to bring back, face and become responsible of a past that has been repressed and removed, a past that is the foundation of our culture today.
The project schedule is composed of a variety of artistic participations: a photographic exhibition by artist Mauricio Lupini titled Observing Ethnography; a contemporary dance performance by the independent dance company MK; a relational artwork by artist and curator Massimiliano Di Franca that involves the artist Jimmie Durham and the anthropologist Tarek Elhaik; a video screening of works of both Italian and international artists such as: Zineb Sedira, Isaac Julien, Marco Baroncelli and Enzo Orlandi, Adelita Husni-Bey, Laurent Grasso, Lidia Abdul; a talk with the artist and anthropologist Fiamma Montezemolo, and scholars Iain Chambers and Lidia Curti, during which Fiamma Montezemolo’s video Traces will be screened for the first time in Italy.

 

>> link to the exhibition website