In a time of imperialist, authoritarian and war-mongering tendencies, the art world has seemed too quiet and timid so far. The Merz Foundation in Turin, on the other hand, has chosen to take a clear stance. Several recent exhibitions and projects, beginning with the 2023 exhibition by Palestinian artist Khalil Rabah, have bravely positioned themselves within the political conversation, using a cultural approach that also informs and builds community. Drawing inspiration from Mario Merz’s text, “culture strips itself bare and reveals war”, the collective exhibition Push the Limits 2 continues in line with these intentions. The show is the sequel to a previous exhibition of the same name, which in 2020 offered the concept of art that confronts, questions and transcends cultural, geographical, identity, sexual and societal “boundaries”.

Fiona Banner, “Pranayama Organ”, 2021, HD Video with soundtrack. Courtesy the artist and Frith Street Gallery, London. © Fiona Banner Studio

The “overcoming of limits” refers to a fundamental element of art, specifically the capacity for imagination, as explained by Giulio Carlo Argan. To imagine is to give shape to new worlds, alternative views, and various solutions to relationships and conflicts: it is the ability to visualize a goal before attempting to attain it. By entering the world of the imaginative, art creates symbolic precipitates that condense and recognise a common feeling. If the act of sharing experiences, from the individual to the many, enables us to take a stance and subsequently strengthen public opinion to the extent of encouraging collective action, art can become a potent political force. Even, and perhaps particularly, when it retains its aesthetic and imaginative qualities and avoids reduction to mere slogans.

Helina Metaferia, “Headdress 34”, 2022, hand cut and assembled mixed media collage. Image courtesy of the artist

The exhibition at the Fondazione Merz chooses a communicative register that is not loud, modulated on anti-rhetorical tones, through the works of nineteen artists from various generations and backgrounds, some of whom are well-known, such as Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Mona Hatoum, Emily Jacir, Zineb Sedira, and the Italians Monica Bonvicini and Rossella Biscotti. Within imaginative contexts that are occasionally hallucinatory or even poetic, the themes of war and violence, as well as the tragedy of humanity’s inability to liberate itself from the dynamics of oppression and abuse of power, are revealed. The complaint is never trivialised or treated as an end in itself. From the angels floating above the “last supper” by Moscow artist Katerina Kovaleva to Helina Metaferia‘s collages, which bring to life a choral portrait of the memories of the BIPoC community rights movements; from the ritualistic, ironic and surreal dance of two inflatable fighter planes in Fiona Banner‘s film Pranayama Organ to the altered gaze in Egyptian director Heba Y. Amin‘s short films, which evoke lyrical impressions of the relationship between places, their perception and experiences of travel and migration, the works on display open up geographically and culturally diverse perspectives, activating mythopoetic processes.

Mirna Bamieh, “Sour Things: the Pantry”, 2024, installation view. Courtesy Fondazione Merz, ph. Andrea Guermani

The presence of Palestinian female artists is noteworthy. Emily Jacir‘s subjective video recordings depict the daily reality of needing to cross the Israeli-Palestinian border: the low, moving perspective portrays the feeling of being at the whim of the checkpoint’s arbitrary authority. Whereas Mirna Bamieh, who fled Gaza after the bombing began in 2023 “while houses were being razed to the ground”, reworked the trauma of her escape and the sudden loss of her home environment by recreating a habitat that develops the concept of the container, from the room to the jar in the pantry. The symbolic significance of this object, perceived as a political act of grounding and nurturing through conservation, therefore constituting an act of resistance, is transcended by the chromatic and tactile features of the forms crafted in clay and glass.

Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, “Metapanorama I, II, III”, 2023 and Katerina Kovaleva, “Memory table”, 2025), installation view. Courtesy Fondazione Merz, ph. Andrea Guermani

Yasmine Eid-Sabbagh and Rozenn Quéré‘s work Possible and Imaginary Lives also gives voice to Palestinian history and culture, drawing on an archive of memories and photographs preserved by Palestinian families exiled in refugee camps or other cities such as Beirut, Cairo, New York and Paris. The artists convert these testimonials into a dialogical tale that conveys nostalgia and displacement, intertwining reality and fantasy. Lastly, in the outdoor areas of the foundation, Maja Bajević‘s installation, Sous les pavés, les jeux, employs uprooted cobblestones to evoke historical episodes of intense conflict, as well as of playful upheaval and social transformation. Songs of resistance and struggle play in the background, introducing a feeling of melancholy but also unease: the meaning of past history escapes us as it repeats itself in vain.

Emanuela Termine

Info:

AA.V. Push the Limits 2. La cultura si sveste e fa apparire la guerra
a cura di Claudia Gioia e Beatrice Merz
curated by Claudia Gioia and Beatrice Merz
Fondazione Merz
via Limone 24, Torino
www.fondazionemerz.org

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is a contemporary art magazine since 1980