The White Hunter/Il Cacciatore Bianco

Curated by Marco Scotini

FM Centre for Contemporary Art is pleased to present the third event of its exhibition program on the occasion of the next edition of miart: The White Hunter. African Memories and representations. Curated by Marco Scotini, the exhibition continues an investigation into the decentralization of hegemonic models of western artistic modernity within the current geo-political scenario.

Rather than an exhibition about Africa, The White Hunter is about a construction that the West made of it, and it starts from a radical critique of our gaze on Africa. How are we to be sure that what the “white hunter” saw, at the beginning of the last century, isn’t still what continues to be the object of our gaze? What is heard throughout the entire exhibition is how the view of the hunter has been fundamental in the construction of a subjugated Otherness.

The exhibition’s title refers to the film works of the artists Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi, pioneers in the archeological reconstruction of imperialism and racial ideology through images that are specifically linked to the Italian historical context. The exhibition starts with a section dedicated to a possible reconstruction of the first presentation of Negro Art exhibition from the 1922 Venice Biennale, at the dawn of Fascism, that included a nucleus of statues and masks from Mali, the Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Gabon, Congo.

With over 30 contemporary and an equal number of anonymous, traditional artists with more than 150 works, The White Hunter presents a path articulated around the forms of representation and memory of contemporary African reality through works from major Italian collections as well as archive materials on Italian colonial history. The layout of the exhibition consist of a number of juxtapositions and quotations from previously held international shows on Africa, considering their shape as an ever changing form of representation, bound as cultural, ideological and social construction. The exhibition intends to challenge identity politics and propose a de-centered subjectivity, one that goes beyond the capturing gaze.

The contemporary works testify to the richness of artistic research, of re-appropriation and resistance to the various forms of exclusion, hegemony and certification, in line with a discourse of affirmation within the contemporary debate generated by the emergence of large, international exhibitions dedicated to the African continent, its diasporas, independence and the battles for cultural and political de-colonialization.

Exhibited artists: Georges Adéagbo, John Akomfrah, Joël Andrianomearisoa, El Anatsui, Kader Attia, Sammy Baloji, Fréderic Brouly Bouabré, Seni Awa Camara, Nidhal Chamekh, Samuel Fosso, Peter Friedl, Meschac Gaba, Kendell Geers, Yervant Gianikian e Angela Ricci Lucchi, John Goba, Nicholas Hlobo, Bodys Isek Kingelez, Rashid Johnson, Seydou Keïta, William Kentdrige, Abdoulaye Konaté, Moshekwa Langa, Gonçalo Mabunda, Ibrahim Mahama, Zwelethu Mthethwa, Wangechi Mutu, Maurice Pefura, Cameron Platter, Robin Rhode, Chéri Samba, Yinka Shonibare, Malick Sidibé, Pascale Marthine Tayou, Guy Tillim, Cyprien Tokoudagba, Ouattara Watts, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye

Exhibition advisors: Simon Njami, Gigi Pezzoli, Grazia Quaroni, Adama Sanneh

In collaboration with: lettera27 Foundation, Lubumbashi Biennale, Festival del Cinema Africano, d’Asia e America Latina, Centro Studi Archeologia Africana

Galleries: Laura Bulian Gallery; temporary space: Studio Fabio Mauri

FM Centre for Contemporary Art is promoted by Open Care - Servizi per l’Arte, the only company in Italy offering integrated services for the management and conservation of art.