EXTRAORDINARY VISIONS. ITALY

Italian Institute of Culture, New Delhi, India
from 31 October 2018 to 13 January 2019

MAXXI is taking its photography collection to India on the occasion of the celebrations for the 70th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Italy and India and the 24th edition of the Technology Summit at which Italy is a guest.

From the metaphysical visions of Luigi Ghirri to the crowded beaches of Massimo Vitali, from the landscapes drenched in colour of Franco Fontana to the harrowing account of an abandoned land by Letizia Battaglia, from the elegant and essential architectural visions of Gabriele Basilico to the mountains of Walter Niedermayr: all this and more is EXTRAORDINARY VISIONS. ITALY, a portrait of the nation through the eyes of numerous masters of Italian photography, an exhibition curated by Margherita Guccione and Simona Antonacci, promoted by the Ministry for Economic Development and with the fundamental support of Simest Società Italiana per le Imprese all’Esteropresented at MAXXI in 2016 and represents a new stage in the diplomacy of art and culture promoted by the museum. Extraordinary Visions. L’italia ci guarda, presented at MAXXI in 2016 and represents a new stage in the diplomacy of art and culture promoted by the museum.
The works on show, all drawn from the MAXXI Permanent Collection, recount the cultural transformations in which Italy has been a protagonist in recent decades. EXTRAORDINARY VISIONS. ITALY is not an illustrated history of Italy, nor is it a chronological and descriptive account, but rather a reflection on the appearance and the substance of contemporary Italy that tries to capture the most up-to-date dimension, far from a stereotypical idea of the Belpaese. The exhibition offers a journey via three thematic paths: CONTEMPORARY LANDSCAPES, STATE, CITY, WORK and ART AND CULTURE, each conceived as an independent visual discourse, a “framing” of converging or diverging points of view to compose an “atlas” that is both poetic and documentary, social and institutional, of the Italy of the last 30 years.

Exhibiting artists: Iwan Baan, Olivo Barbieri, Gabriele Basilico, Letizia Battaglia, Jordi Bernadò, Alighiero Boetti, Andrea Botto, Silvia Camporesi, Giovanni Chiaramonte, Mario Cresci, Franco Fontana, Gianni Berengo Gardin, Luigi Ghirri, Guido Guidi, Giuseppe Leone, Ugo Mulas, Walter Niedermayr, Massimo Piersanti, Fabio Ponzio, Massimo Vitali.

in collaboration with