MEDIUM
For the new Inside Artphilein, the De Pietri Artphilein Foundation invites Italian-Eritrean-Ethiopian artist Jermay Michael Gabriel.
The artist explores the trauma of Italian colonial history not as an event confined to the past, but as a presence that continues to permeate the present and shape contemporary forms of memory.
Memory does not follow a linear trajectory. It settles into the fibres of individual and collective experience, moving continuously between past, present, and future. The artist works across these layered temporalities through photography, sculpture, sound, performance, and installation, transforming the archive from an apparently objective testimony into a surface on which history can be intervened upon, rewritten, and questioned.
The exhibition at La Piscina presents a selection of works that reflects the complexity of this practice, inviting audiences to engage with an archive made up of images, materials, traces, and omissions. Through gestures such as erasing, burning, and carving, history is once again questioned and brought to the surface.
Inside Artphilein also offers an opportunity for dialogue with works from the Artphilein Collection. For the exhibition, the artist has selected Per costruzione di oasi by Mario Schifano.