The Istituto Italiano di Cultura Toronto, in collaboration with the University of Toronto, Black History Month Florence (BHMF) and the Istituto Italiano di Cultura Washington, presents The Recovery Plan: Alle porte coi sassi, a pop-up research centre consisting of an exhibition dedicated to artists Kelly Costigliolo, Jermay Michael Gabriel and Christian Offman, research engaging intersecting Black histories in Italy across the XX century and a collection of publications from Africa e Mediterraneo, a culture magazine launched in 1992 in Bologna.
The Recovery Plan: Alle porte coi sassi
A pop-up research center and exhibition
OPENING
Wednesday, October 23 | 6:30PM
FREE EVENT | OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
EXHIBITION
October 24 to November 20, 2024
Monday to Friday
10AM to 4PM
FREE ADMISSION
ISTITUTO ITALIANO DI CULTURA
496 Huron St | Toronto ON
The project reflects upon the recovery of underrepresented and under-narrated fragments of Black history in the Italian context. Gauging what it looks like to recover from the social impact of repeated forms of marginalisation, the works of three Italian artists of African descent provide nuanced and layered reflections on archival memory and the preservation of cultural histories as distilled in sculptural works. Several chapters of research developed within and beyond Italian archives provide a counterpart to the works of art and their critical engagement with the physical and ephemeral traces of the Black past. This project exports a socially engaged collective practice that has been carried out by The Recovery Plan in Florence as a cultural hub and facilitator of research dedicated to people and cultures of African Descent in Italy.
This pop-up, designed expressly for the context of the Istituto Italiano di Cultura Toronto, sheds light on the layered history, highlighting the centuries-long interaction between Italy and the African continent. The pop-up intends to facilitate narrations of Italian history in regards to the cultural contributions of people and cultures of African descent. The Recovery Plan: Alle porte coi sassi draws its title from a Florentine saying that refers to a late arrival or an imminent change on the horizon.
KELLY COSTIGLIOLO was born in 1993 in Genoa. She spent her childhood between the sands of Rio de Janeiro and the Ligurian hills. Based in Paris since 2012, Costigliolo has collaborated with the NPO Watoto Kenya as a photographer and with the Makobeni Trust Company as a volunteer for their cultural development programs, teaching photography lessons to kids from the Makobeni Community near Kenya’s Tzavo Park. In the digital era, Kelly is still interested in recording her works as physical entities. She fuels her obsession for the concept of memories, contemporary art and communication by working on several projects, following them from the first draft to completion and keeping them in her hand-made books.
JERMAY MICHAEL GABRIEL is a multidisciplinary artist based in Milan and is a member of the musical duo Plethor X, alongside sound designer Giovanni Isgrò. His artistic practice embraces both sound and contemporary art, assuming that for spaces at the intersection of multiple forms of marginalisation, visibility or representation do not produce liberation. Crucial to his work is the redefinition – which, in some cases, becomes physical destruction – of the symbols of a hegemonic, effectively oppressive narrative of identity and belonging, as brought to life through references to his Italo-Eritrean- Ethiopian ancestry.
CHRISTIAN OFFMAN (Rwanda, 1993) lives and works between Munich and Bologna. He moved to Italy in 1999, growing up between Rwanda and Italy: the sum of these two cultural and geographical poles is reflected in his aesthetics and practice. The focal points of his research are identity, memory and historical repression, which drive the contradictions and ideological flaws that demarcate a postcolonial contemporaneity.
ABOUT THE RECOVERY PLAN
www.blackhistorymonthflorence.com
The Recovery Plan is an exhibition space, library, research and community center for dialogue and transnational exchange on Afro-descendent cultures located in Florence, Italy, on the SRISA (Santa Reparata International School of Art) campus. Founded in 2019, The Recovery Plan was born out of the over 500 events orchestrated, curated, coordinated, and co-promoted by Black History Month Florence since its inception in 2016, designed as a cultural repository for socially engaged education. The centre hosts a range of events, seminars, retreats, workshops, and residencies reflecting upon Italy’s historic role as a site for cultural exchange. The initiative advanced by The Recovery Plan is a rallying of voices aimed at facilitating cross-cultural research and dialogue. The centre is run by an Italian non-profit association called Associazione Culturale BHMF with a team of twenty volunteers and a committee of five advisors across cultural sectors. Since 2019, The Recovery Plan has developed pop-up exhibitions and institutional occupations that export multiple platforms into galleries, museums, universities, and cultural centers internationally. This exportation of our platforms is simultaneously a practice of sharing and learning and one of engaging with local initiatives that parallel our work, learning from their methodologies in relation to artists’ research and archives. The platforms that make up this exhibition are YGBI Research Residency, a program collectivizing young Italian artists of African descent in long-term mentorships, Black Archive Alliance, a platform dedicated to archival research and sharing focused on Black history in Italian archives and Library on Loan, a program facilitating the borrowing of personal libraries as a form of collective knowledge sharing.
Special thanks to:
Andrea Fatona, Angelica Pesarini, Esery Mondesir, Jenny Suddick, Melanie Billark, Daniela Lee-Kim, Jessica Rysyk, Karen Carter, Joséphine Denis, The Centre for the Study of Black Canadian Diaspora, BAND Gallery, SRISA, OCAD University, University of Toronto, Sandra Federici and Africa e Mediterraneo.