Silvia Camporesi has explored over a year and a half all the Italian regions in research of abandoned countries and buildings. "Atlas Italiae" is the result of this collection of images, an ideal map of Italy that is disappear, an atlas of fading. The artist lets us discover hidden and often unveiled corners, magical places in their peeling marks, they are pervaded by impalpable energies. The photographic series presents itself as a poetic collection of places (uninhabited villages, crumbling architectures, industrial archeology) founded on the search for fragments of memory. This mapping has no intent to report, but ideally incorporates the spirit of the Grand Tour, the search for past sign, still bearers of traces of lives experienced, with which to confront to reflect on the present in order to imagine the future. Once the artists went to discover the Roman ruins, today Silvia Camporesi searches for the contemporary ruins to observe the passing of time.
On the occasion of the MLB exhibition Maria Livia Brunelli, the home gallery in front of the Estense Castle, the artist decided to deepen his exploration of the territory of Ferrara in the footsteps of the fascinating places described by Giorgio Bassani. Bassani is a writer born in Ferrara and from there he became internationally famous thanks to "Il Giardino dei Finzi Contini". A spiritual assonance links the writer to the photographer from Forlì, because the Camporesi develops and continues the exhortation of Bassani to honor and respect the vestiges of the Italian past, which was the basis of his activity in "Italia Nostra", trace that, according to Camporesi, are not limited to the past of the Renaissance but are also those of the most recent history that, observed with greater attention, are not less worthy of respect and full of charm.
In fact, part of the photos that make up the installation exposed to the MLB was taken in Ferrara on the wave of the evocations of the gardens and views described by Bassani in his books. the grandiose installation on the central wall of the gallery are all photographs printed in black and white and then meticulously hand-colored by the artist, to give a conceptual resemblance to places and stories that have lost color, but which Silvia Camporesi has decided to bring back in light and memory.

Two artists who use photography for an analysis Napoli nowadays . Sonia Lenzi recontextualizes the Lari, roman deities that guarded the family, inside the votive shrines of the historic neighborhoods of the city, putting in relation with contemporary sacredness. The past NATO base of Bagnoli, immortalized in its abandonment, becomes for Giovanni Scotti a symbol of a desired urban regeneration. Two realities full of emotion that come from Napoli to Ferrara for the Festival di Internazionale, one of the most significant initiatives of the Italian cultural scene that takes place from September 29th to October 1st, with the intent to recreate an entire number of International live: journalists, writers and protagonists of the cultural world dialogue on issues of great relevance and relevance social, economic and political, arousing the interest and the involvement of a large public.
Sonia Lenzi tells about her work Lares Familiares: “Family relationships are the first to compare and domestic reality is our starting point for the adventure called life. The meaning of our existence is therefore inherent in those relationships and in those places. In the Roman world the Lari were gods who ensured protection and fortune to the family they belonged to and that occupied a place of honor in the heart of the house inside a particular shrines, the lararium. Their cult and lararia have a strong relationship with the difficult reality of today's Napoli and with the votive shrines in the old neighborhoods of the city.
These are devotional altars, cavity built for family members, a sort of little temples with the photograph of the deceased and sacred images, flowers, objects linked to a spontaneous religiosity. There are people who are victims of road accidents, others killed by stray bullets or the Camorra, like Annalisa Durante, used as a human shield during an attack. The chronological and conceptual distance between the two phenomena is canceled by me: the Lares of the Archaeological Museum collections become small three-dimensional photographic objects that I have recreated, that some families of the Quartieri Spagnoli, the Rione Sanità, the Forcella and Mercato insert in the devotional altars, that they have cared for ". The Sonia Lenzi’s Lare has been permanently entrusted to the families or communities they have accepted, to bring good luck, directly from ancient Rome, during a performative delivery action (which took place on 6 July 2017), which was attended by the Directors of the Archaeological Museum of Napoli Paolo Giulerini and the Director of MADRE Andrea Viliani. the performance documented through an unpublished video for the first time presented to the public, together with photographs of some devotional altars, photographic objects and larari created by the artist. The project had the Matronato of the Donnaregina Foundation for Contemporary Arts, in addition to the patronage of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and the City of Naples. Giovanni Scotti instead tells the reality of a large abandoned complex, the ex Nato di Bagnoli, near Napoli. A place mythologized by the artist since childhood. Scotti say: “when I was a child I heard about NATO as an incredible and inaccessible place, but I didn’t know what exactly it was and what was done in there. What I knew was that you could buy cheap peanut butter, marshmallows, Marlboros, TVs, VCRs, cameras and stereos. All American stuff. Inaccessible if you did not know someone inside. Until one evening, during the concert of Edoardo Bennato, the first and last event organized there after the farewell of the Americans, I slipped into the rooms on the upper floors and finally I saw. I saw the light of an era that was fading and another that from the past illuminated my memories, when I imagined that place full of mystery and magic. The lights of the street lamps penetrated the windows like giant yellow moths that rested on my heart, while all around the air still smelled of computers and documents just transferred, of the letterhead with the fourteenth wind star of the JFC- Naples, but also some sweets. Like the box of Cinnamon Hearts in the shape of a heart, still sealed, that slept forgotten in a half-closed locker, next to a CD with the writing "NATO SECRET". The ex Nato di Bagnoli is a place with a burning history: owned by the Banco di Napoli Foundation and originally intended for the reception of destitute children, after the war it was requisitioned by the Americans and from 1954 to 2013 it was the headquarters of the Supreme Command of NATO, the most important in Southern Europe. After the farewell of the troops, the Municipality of Napoli proposed using the complex for socio-cultural purposes, accusing the Foundation of pursuing instead a project to build houses. But it was then the same Municipality to stipulate an agreement in which it renounces the idea of a large area available to the city, encouraging speculation. A story that is unveiled in its raw reality, but with a sensitivity and a poem that elevates the interiors of this immense complex to the authority of a contemporary cathedral. The same suspended and rarefied atmospheres can be found in the series of photographs dedicated to Edenlandia, the first theme park built in Europe in 1965, in the suburbs of Napoli, in total abandonment since 2013. The volume that collects the shots, The City of Disenchantment, recently presented at the MADRE in Naples by Andrea Viliani and Giovanni Chiaramonte, unveils the entire investigation on this surreal place.

Cuore liquefatto is an unpublished photographic series by Anna Di Prospero, inspired by the works of the artist Carlo Bononi, he was one of the protagonists of seventeenth century art in Ferrara. Initially he was influenced by Caravaggio. Later he focused his poetics on the effects of light, so much to be called “Tintoretto ferrarese”. Anna Di Prospero. She has created an artistic project on the figure of Bononi and on the dynamics of affective relationships that bind the portrayed characters together.
Anna Di Prospero immediately felt attracted to the figure of this painter because the effects of light and emotional relationships are two elements that have always characterized his research. In fact she reveals: “the main elements that guided my creative process were the empathic character that Bononi summarizes between the painted figure and the observer and the deep emotions arising from this combination the series realized doesn’t want to be an iconographic and stylistic remake of the painter, but a paraphrase of his unique and strong artistic sensibility and interpretative The true essence of this work is precisely the emotion, the feeling. To concentrate on this aspect, I worked by subtraction, creating images with an essential and direct composition.
Studying Bononi's work, my attention often fell on some factors that recur in many of his paintings as strong gestures, sculpted and sensual bodies, scenes of amazement and wonder and those of torment. These were the source of inspiration and creation of the subjects present in my photographs ".
The eight works that the artist has selected for the exhibition constitute a poetic and evocative series, in which Anna Di Prospero has voluntarily excluded any reconstruction of the pictorial and mannerist style. In fact, the series is a reflection on the work of the painter but with a strong contemporary nature, in fact, the series is a reflection on the work of the painter but with a strong contemporary character, not only from the stylistic point of view but also from the contents . The images were created following a specific sequence and narrative sequence: a development of micro events and the unfolding of a story that evokes a wounded feeling, like a "Cuore liquefatto".

"My Gem Or Lab Hell" is the title of double exhibition with Stefano W. Pasquini and Mustafa Sabbagh, curated by Massimo Marchetti.
Usually there is no opportunity for dialogue between a "gem" and a "infernal laboratory". And yet this juxtaposition of foreign realities finds its own reason for being exactly in the place that hosts it, in the letters that make up its name and which can be reconfigured as the elements of an exhibition: the title is the anagram of MLB home gallery.
The case, as Dadaism teaches, is revealing. In fact, the same house-gallery is an oxymoron because it is evident that the challenge to solve the dualism between public and private in one single identity is resolved in a singular reality: a place built on the sense of hospitality and the production of empathy. In the visitor, the sensation of accessing something as precious as a gem is progressively superimposed on being involved in such an incessant and pervasive dynamism that it becomes a guest of the mythological forge of Vulcano.
From the early 2000s the artistic paths of Stefano W. Pasquini and Mustafa Sabbagh have had the opportunity to cross each other in several group exhibitions and in the pages of an art magazine, but his is the first time that a direct comparison takes place between different poetics that are approached in the political feature of the gaze on actuality. On the one hand, Pasquini's work presents itself as a series of simple and at the same time violent gestures that pass through several techniques with an anarchic and provocative spirit; on the other hand, Sabbagh's work is mainly expressed in photography and video, “dove l'intensa sofisticazione è funzionale a fare emergere la dimensione sovversiva e perturbante della fisicità.” . The theme of the house-gallery is developed by Pasquini and Sabbagh starting from the dilemma between everyday life and exceptionality to get to provoke unexpected results. It is important to underline that the MLB home gallery has recently crossed the finishing line of its first ten years of activity.
For this particular exhibition the two artists will disseminate their works in unusual spaces. Pasquini will intervene directly on the elements that characterize the domestic side of the home gallery, such as the sofa, the large table, the window doors. the artist realizes a series of assemblages and photographic prints on unusual supports, they originate from the ironic contextualization of absurd sentences at first sight, for example: images from Google, unusual scans of architectural and human details, all traces of the memory of this place and the people passing through it “con le quali si “esporrà” la confluenza tra vita familiare e attività lavorativa in un groviglio di capovolgimenti e duplicazioni.”.
Instead, Sabbagh will present a new version of the video installations “anthro_pop_gonia” where some Greek myths have been dethroned by their divine dimension to interpret the human history of contemporary vices. Gods and demigods will then be convened to a symposium that crush in the various rooms of the house-gallery evoking the atmosphere of a family ritual. At this installation Sabbagh will support a pair of photographic prints of the cycle “sub limen”, one of these works is reworked by Pasquini, a work of an ambiguous nature that embodies the deviant operation put in place by the two artists.
Thanks to these artists the house-gallery will be shown at the same time as a precious jewel and a whirling laboratory, to interrogate both visitors and its inhabitants.