Download Bel Suol d`Amore * – The Scattered Colonial Body Leone Contini

Bel Suol d’Amore * – The Scattered Colonial Body
Leone Contini (artist) and Arnd Schneider (curator)
Bel Suol d’Amore – The Scattered Colonial Body is an artistic interpretation of the collections
of the former African Colonial Museum now in storage at the Museo delle Civiltà and
represents a first step in a broader process of reflection on the collections and the history of
Italian colonialism that continues in the following months with a number of initiatives. The
intention is to offer new perspectives and visions on aspects of the Italian cultural heritage as
yet little explored.
This exhibition is the result of a collaboration between the artist Leone Contini and
anthropologist Arnd Schneider to identify and work with sites of contested colonial heritage
in Italy. During the course of the last 6 months, they have investigated the collections of the
former IsIAO - Istituto Italiano per l'Africa e l'Oriente (The Italian Institute of Africa and the
Orient), including the former African Colonial Museum. Dispersed across the Italian capital,
they constitute a ‘scattered colonial body’ – hidden, little known and almost forgotten, and
just as the country’s colonial history, the subject of an apparent amnesia in Italian society.
What once was for late 19th and early 20th century liberal governments, and then for the
Fascist dictatorship, regarded as a glorious colonial empire, has since the end of World War II
fallen into oblivion, and only occasional controversy (between apologists of colonialism and
those demanding its critical historical analysis, including racism, repression of indigenous
populations, and war crimes).
Although it is based on research in museum collections (often hidden away in depots or, in
any case, inaccessible to the public), as well as family collections and archives (including
those of the artist whose mother was born in Tripoli), this exhibition does not pretend to bring
new ‘facts’ to live, but rather intervenes into the debate in other ways. It makes ‘visible’ (at
least in part) the dismembered and scattered body of the collections of the former IsIAO. It
aims to provoke new thinking and provide insight into the serendipitous research process
where the private and inter-subjective have met in unexpected ways – for instance, in the
encounters of the artist with employees of the National Museum of Prehistory and
Ethnography “L. Pigorini”, who incidentally shared with him colonial (and post-colonial)
family histories as settlers in Libya (one of the former Italian colonies). In fact, during the
course of the research, the work with former Italian settlers in Libya became more important
and included also the exploration of their foodways, in particular couscous - a dish adapted
from the colonized country.
A central focus of the exhibition are the facial plaster masks, executed during expeditions by
Italian anthropologists to Libya, in the 1920s and 1930s, among them Lidio Cipriani (a Fascist
and supporter of scientific racism who in 1938 was one of the signatories of the ‘Manifesto
della Razza’). For the facial plaster masks, Contini and Schneider decided to re-construct
them as 3D copies, which would permit them to be taken out of the museum depots- for
instance, to use in discussions. The procedure re-enacts and deconstructs the original act of
appropriation from the colonial subject. With the process of scanning (repeated as a
performance during the opening of the exhibition) and subsequent 3D-printing, Contini and
Schneider wanted to invoke a process of ‘reanimation’ of the colonial subject who comes
‘alive’ as a simulacrum, and whose agency had been repressed through the colonial regime,
and the often forced and violent ‘impression’ of plaster to obtain the facial mask.
Now that a large part of the ISiAO collections has been incorporated by the Pigorini Museum
as part of the Museo delle Civiltà, a number of activities will be initiated, in order to create a
future exposition that will include a critical reappraisal of material culture within the history
of Italian colonialism and relate to current post-colonial debates.
(*) “Beautiful Land of Love”, from the Italian propaganda song “A Tripoli” (1911)
Leone Contini’s work is located at the crossroads between art and anthropology. His
practices include interventions in public space, exhibitions, lecture performances, textual and
audio-visual narratives. Among the places where he has exhibited or held interventions are:
Gam, Torino, 2017; Mudec, Milano, 2017; Quadriennale, Roma, 2016; Cittadellarte, Biella,
2016; 2nd Tbilisi Triennial Georgia, 2015, D-0 Ark Underground Biennal Bosnia 2015,
Kronika Bytom, Poland, 2015, Delfina Foundation, London, 2015, 2014, and 2017; MART,
Rovereto, 2015; Galleria Civica, Trento, 2014; Khoj, New Delhi, 2014; Kunstraum, Munich,
2014; Villa Romana, Florence, 2014; DOCVA, Milano, 2014 and 2015; Kunstverein,
Amsterdam 2013, Tirana Art Lab, 2013.
http://leonecontini.tumblr.com/
Arnd Schneider is Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo, and works on
contemporary art, visual anthropology, and global migrations. His latest book is Alternative
Art and Anthropology: Global Encounters (Bloomsbury 2017); he co-organized the
international conference Fieldworks: Dialogues between Art and Anthropology (Tate Modern,
2003), and previous publications include Contemporary Art and Anthropology (Berg, 2006),
Between Art and Anthropology (Berg, 2010), and Anthropology and Art Practice
(Bloomsbury, 2013) all co-edited with Christopher Wright, and Experimental Film and
Anthropology (Bloomsbury, 2014), co-edited with Caterina Pasqualino.
http://www.sv.uio.no/sai/english/people/aca/arnds/index.html
The research and exhibition are part of TRACES: Transmitting Contested Cultural Heritage
with the Arts: From Intervention to Co-Production, a project funded by the European
Commission as part of the Horizon 2020 Research Programme.
www.tracesproject.eu + LOGO