YOU-WE + ABLO

curated by Francesco Bonami

Fifteen large video installations make up a nomadic, political and cultural exhibition route, almost comparable to an imaginary world tour of the social transformation of reality. The featured artists come from different parts of the world and the project highlights how, following the global phase, an era of neodiversity is approaching, in which the once seen obstacles that arose from the differences between diverse cultures are fast being turned into new resources.

The title You-We plays with phonetics and has an Asiatic ring to it, addressing a relationship between one and the other that is no longer one of opposition but one of position, which has become highly relative in the contemporary world. The Other is no longer an absolute but is dependent upon the point of view that is adopted. In many different ways, the artists here reflect on the ongoing, fluent exchange between ‘you’ and ‘we’.
“You-We” aims to update the public regarding the role that video art has adopted in recent years, through a collection that is ever-developing. The video works form part of an important nucleus of works – one of the most important in Italy – considered today to be a fundamental segment in the story of contemporary art.

Artists: Bani Abidi, Lina Bertucci, Mircea Cantor, Sebastian Diaz Morales, Marine Hugonnier, Amar Kanwar, Koo Donghee, Yong-Baek Lee, Steve McQueen, Anri Sala, Doron Solomons, Catherine Sullivan, Fiona Tan, Song Tao, Artur Żmijewski.

On occasion of the exhibition “You-We” a further project entitled “Ablo” will also be presented. This show is a symbolic conclusion of the main exhibition that aims to reflect on how every society is enriched by exchange and by the constant bonding of one’s own culture with that of others. Furthermore, the recent news of disturbing events among locals in the area of Via Padova in Milan has significantly emphasized the issues surrounding integration.
Ten young Italian artists have been invited to create videos on one subject. The artists have each filmed a three-minute video whose main character is Abdullay Kadal Traore. Ablo, as he likes to be called, is a griot musician from Burkina Faso who has been living in Milan for seven years and playing with various music groups, such as the Milanese and multiethnic “Orchestra di via Padova” and the group “Sinitah”. The ten videos will be presented and screened together, one after another, constituting a single work and creating a kind of visual and cultural kaleidoscope whereby the same person is viewed and portrayed by different personalities with different points of view.

Artists: Dafne Boggeri, Gianluca e Massimiliano De Serio, Riccardo Giacconi, Sabina Grasso, Antonio Guiotto, Domenico Mangano, Patrizia Monzani, Maria Domenica Rapicavoli, Patrizio Di Massimo, Diego Marcon.