Let’s start with the video interview. The person answering some questions is Gino Strada, founder and thirty-year face of Emergency, the humanitarian organization that offers free, high-level care to victims of war and poverty, promoting concrete actions for peace. His continuous opposition to war seems like a simple statement of intent and, instead, this position encompasses a universe of generosity and daily practices on the side of the innocent and the marginalized. His face in the video is one of the three souls of “AGAINST WAR – gazes and imaginaries”, the exhibition organized at the Civic Museums of Reggio Emilia by Emergency and the queer, anti-racist, transfeminist and undisciplined Bolognese artistic collective CHEAP.
AA. VV., “Contro la guerra. Sguardi e immaginari”, CHEAP x Emergency, installation vie wat Palazzo dei Musei, Reggio Emilia, ph. Margherita Caprilli, courtesy CHEAP
The other two souls of this destabilizing and necessary exhibition, linked to the Emergency Festival 2025, are represented by some photographs taken by the collective from Emergency’s decades-long archive and a colorful but above all rebellious series of street posters, which is the art form through which CHEAP expresses itself. «We have a direct adjective for this artistic exhibition: it’s vital, in the sense that it’s situated in a context literally between life and death», states Sara Manfredi on behalf of the female-led collective, active in Bologna since 2013. And, while in Venice at the same time, the film centered on the true voice of Hind Rajab, the Palestinian child killed by Israeli soldiers in Gaza while seeking help with her cell phone, receives 24 minutes of applause, VOICE is also the central theme of the fifth edition of the entire Festival. «We intend to give voice to the many suppressed or silenced voices», declares Rossella Miccio, president of the NGO, «and we know we can do it because we have behind us the experience of 14 million people treated worldwide, therefore concrete examples of saying and doing».
AA. VV., “Contro la guerra. Sguardi e immaginari”, CHEAP x Emergency, installation vie wat Palazzo dei Musei, Reggio Emilia, ph. Margherita Caprilli, courtesy CHEAP
Simonetta Gola, Emergency’s communication director, adds: «our association is the megaphone of all fifty-six wars (many of which are unknown to most people) that plague our contemporary world, and the collaboration with CHEAP is natural between two realities that ideally express the same identity».Councilor for Social Policies Annalisa Rabitti also speaks of harmony with Emergency when she states: «the city and the Reggio community are historically supportive and attentive to the marginalized, so much so that they have now embraced this Festival, whose 2025 edition inauguration is represented precisely by this necessary exhibition».
AA. VV., “Contro la guerra. Sguardi e immaginari”, CHEAP x Emergency, installation vie wat Palazzo dei Musei, Reggio Emilia, ph. Margherita Caprilli, courtesy CHEAP
The second soul of the exhibition is represented by photographs, some giant, others less visible, still others embedded in CHEAP’s posters, which portray medical interventions on the many victims who have received care from Emergency. Amputations, gauze, scalpels, surgeons of great skill, children, adults, women flow before the viewer’s eyes creating an imposing geography of pain. Beyond Cambodia and Iraq, central among the many places of war where Emergency operates (or of social distress, as in Italy), there is Afghanistan, protagonist in two phases, coinciding with the first and second seizure of power by the obscurantist Taliban regime. «What we gain in terms of humanity from the people we meet is infinitely more than what we give», says Gino Strada in the video: a small structural device, namely display walls that cover the photographs leaving them glimpsed through small cracks, allows us to enter this humanity even more deeply.
AA. VV., “Contro la guerra. Sguardi e immaginari”, CHEAP x Emergency, installation vie wat Palazzo dei Musei, Reggio Emilia, ph. Margherita Caprilli, courtesy CHEAP
The heart of the exhibition consists of the third soul on display. CHEAP uses the poster as an artistic medium to express its dissent regarding injustices, violation of rights, civil and military violence, and does so from an international perspective: the collective is, in fact, also composed of members of non-Italian nationality and the posters often bear slogans in English. While in the photographs of Emergency’s work one cannot find even a minimal artistic element but only an exact and raw representation of reality, in CHEAP’s street art posters the political element intersects with the artistic component. The round mouth of a cannon can become the O of the word NO, a broken assault rifle becomes the A of Anarchy, a military assault breaks lives as happens in “Guernica”, a tiny white dove flies in stubborn and contrary direction to the flight of a squadron of war planes.
AA. VV., “Contro la guerra. Sguardi e immaginari”, CHEAP x Emergency, installation vie wat Palazzo dei Musei, Reggio Emilia, ph. Margherita Caprilli, courtesy CHEAP
Elsewhere the political message becomes exhortation with the verb ‘desert’ prominently displayed to remind us that a possible option exists, a McDonald’s sandwich has weapons and bombs as ingredients and here the artistic message intersects with anti-capitalist claims. Colorful and floral are the posters that exalt peace as a state of mind, the invitation to make love rather than war is very present and expressed in different ways, even irony and grotesque are elements irreverently contrasting with the official narrative that wants us predestined to a present of conflicts. Often the slogans printed on the posters are in huge letters or are repeated obsessively to shake the consciences of those who observe, creating inclusive, anti-racist, pacifist, anti-imperialist awareness, opposed to useless consumerism. The slogan TRUST UTOPIA stands out, an invitation to believe in a possible utopia, in a reachable horizon for which it’s worth (and necessary to) fight. If art feeds on what happens today and, above all, if art feeds on the emotions and reactions that daily life provokes, welcome the engaged art of CHEAP, capable of stirring feelings, disturbance, indignation, awakening.
Info:
AA.VV. Contro la guerra. Sguardi e immaginari
curated by CHEAP
05/09 – 26/10/2025
Palazzo dei Musei
Via Lazzaro Spallanzani, 1 – Reggio Emilia
www.musei.re.it
I am Giovanni Crotti, born in 1968, and I feel obliged to thank writing because it drives my life. I cultivate within me multitudes that lead me to investigate, know, and deepen every cultural and creative expression, and then write about it, always trying to be clear and documented in the contents.
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