[RI]TORNARE an exhibition and reflection on the topic of 'return' by Luca Carboni (DAI, 2018), Giulia Crispiani (DAI, 2017), and Niccolò Masini at the Sala Dogana (Palazzo Ducale in Genova). From: October 25 – November 11.
![[Ri]tornare](/image/2018/10/20/unknown_1.jpg%281280x1280%29%28D62FBBC48AF655147407B296708A4FB6%29.jpg)
The exhibition [Ri]tornare is a reflection on the topic of return. To return means to go or come back, as to a former place, position, or state; to revert or recur, as in thought, discourse and so on. We return from a trip, after a more or less long absence, we start again with an activity. We return where we have already been, often with the idea of recurrence. To return means also to give back, to intercalate and start again.
Giulia Crispiani presents a tryptic-tribute to fundamental figures of Italian feminism; Luca Carboni binds together some historic-geographical research topics on Sardinia, in order to materialize some problematic aspects of the Mediterranean contemporaneity—removed yet highly influential; Niccolò Masini's works investigate the nature of temporality, as an attempt to materiality itself, they try to physically re-create a dimension where past and future experience are embodied.
The main focus is to analyze the concept of the physical space intended as a continuation of the temporal axe, according to imaginary intervals. Each of the presented works is an interpretation of this interval. More and more affected by an accelerated temporal dimension, space is today the emblematic dimension for self-understanding.
Keeping in mind that mobility is a privilege confined to specific subjects and geographies, it is necessary to pose some questions, to liberate the act of return from any kind of romanticism: why do we go away in the first place? Where does the desire to return stem from? In which ways can we reactivate experiences and competences, developed during several years of studies and living in different contests and conditions from the reality we have left behind or we go back to?
Despite the axe of return is ideally placed on the vector past–future, what does it mean to reject this duality and the consequential idea of progress, in favor of a reading that would go beyond finding easy solutions in a past to restore or a future to conquer?
The exhibited artworks are developed along independent and parallel thematics, according to the diverse approaches. They want to be an intermediate step towards the construction of a path, where to find communal moments of engagement in the respective places of belonging, through a local-yet-foreign gaze.
Niccolò Masini, Giulia Crispiani and Luca Carboni were born and raised in Italy. After a first academic experience, they decide to continue their studies abroad. They first met at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, where they followed separate courses but graduated together in 2015. After various international experiences, they all decided more or less simultaneously to return to live and work in Italy.