After Food and Game, Home is the theme of the seventh edition Fotoindustria biennial organized by MAST. Home is an English word. Its meaning in Italian is not as clear as one might think. One would naturally translate the word as “casa”, but that’s not exactly the same thing. The word “casa” in fact evokes elements that have more to do with the term “house”, which identifies the physical structure of a living space. The most appropriate translation is, in fact, the idea of a place of belonging, seen in all its nuances. It’s impossible to assign a term to this precise meaning in Italian. The possibilities this theme can open up are immense.
Vuyo Mabheka, “Top Zinto”, 2021, differenti ritagli incollati su carta cotone fine art, courtesy Afronova Gallery
It moves from a purely architectural approach to one involving the realm of urban planning and city construction. From an economic perspective, the theme can be explored by considering real estate; from a political perspective, it can touch on the realm of domestic work and the living environment as a workplace, increasingly present in our lives since the pandemic. And we can also consider the psychological, social and philosophical spheres. The home appears to us as a universe in which countless profound meanings converge: it is a physical structure, a place of belonging and protection, a place of intimacy, memory and transformation. This is the theme that the seventh Fotoindustria biennial addresses, interpreting it through the visions of artists from around the world, thus giving the exhibition an international scope.The various declinations of the home are exhibited by very different artists who interpret the theme intimately and profoundly through poetics and perspectives that highlight its diverse nuances.
Sisto Sisti, “Un bambino rientra a casa con la palla”, 1936/37, inkjet print, courtesy Fototeca dell’Archivio provinciale di Bolzano / Sisto Sisti
Some of the possible declinations sometimes coexist within a single exhibition, as in Sisto Sisti‘s Microcosmo Sinigo (Fondazione del Monte). In this case, the themes of belonging, the living environment and the workplace form the main elements of his poetics. Through a broad perspective on his workplace, he portrays the essence of Italian reality at the beginning of the 20th century, a period in which the Fascist imperative of autarky had created local situations of self-sufficiency, such as that of the Montecatini company in Sinigo, in the province of Bolzano. This company, for which Sisto Sisti had worked, had built a veritable village around itself. The casual photographic approach, free from subject matter preferences, immerses us directly in the reality of the era. A similar approach was also employed by Julia Gaensbacher (Collegio Venturoli), an Austrian photographer whose work, My Dreamhouse Is Not A House, represents the outcome of a visionary project through an objective and impartial perspective. In the city of Graz, the “Gerlitzgrunde” initiative gave several people the opportunity to design their own home. Architect Helfried Huth collaborated with potential residents, giving them the opportunity to imagine their own living space. The exhibition also includes a documentary created by the artist that highlights the project’s benefits for the city and its people.
Julia Gaisbacher, “My Dreamhouse is not a House”, 2019, digitale, c-print, courtesy Julia Gaisbacher by SIAE 2025
If Julia Gaensbacher’s work expresses the positive impact architecture can have on the community, it can be said that Alejandro Cartagena, with his project A Small Guide To Home Ownership (Palazzo Vizzani), focuses on a diametrically opposed theme. His work highlights the traumatic and violent consequences of the urban development push that the megalopolis of Monterrey, Mexico, has implemented, creating highly complex situations for the local community. Curator Francesco Zanot, always attentive to using the exhibition layout to amplify the artist’s poetics, has chosen an extremely chaotic arrangement of the works, making the viewer perceive the chaotic and degraded environment that characterizes the outskirts of this city. Alejandro Cartagena’s work fills the gaps that characterize Mexico’s expansionist policy. A political perspective takes on a different meaning in the work of Ursula Schulz Dornburg, who, with her exhibition Various Homes (Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna), uses it to contextualize the worlds she portrays. The residential structure is always photographed frontally and simply. Her body of work showcases some of the world’s most unique homes. In Indonesia, structures are built of wood, straw and earth that disintegrate within a few years and are rebuilt. In Istanbul, homes are built on the banks of the Bosphorus, similar to the canals of Venice, but unlike Italian homes, these are made of wood (often short-lived). Her works are reportages of centuries-old traditions that create homes of limited durability, immortalized by photography and immortalized in their essence. The rarely seen human figure comes to life through the objects we find in the photographs. They are living in constant transformation.
Ursula Schulz Dornburg, “Bugis Houses, Sulawesi, Indonesia”, 1983, C- print mounted in Aluminium, courtesy Ursula Schulz-Dornburg
Life, so present in Ursula Schulz Dornburg’s photographs, disappears entirely in one of the works featured in Moira Ricci‘s exhibition: Quarta Casa. One of the series (Dove Il Cielo è Più Vicino) depicts Tuscan farmhouses stripped of their doors and windows. The houses, no longer functional, evoke the abandonment of the countryside, an increasingly felt and present reality. The exhibition is divided into three sections, which, creating a true retrospective of the artist’s work (the first ever), explore the territory of belonging, identity, and family. Moira Ricci’s works are powerful and intimate. They analyze the traditions and beliefs of her homeland, the Tuscan Maremma. Through autobiographical works, she analyzes the deepest and most emotional aspects of her life, understanding the space of belonging as a psychological, affective, and sentimental place, as well as territorial. Understanding the home as something profoundly tied to the past, to memories, and to remembrance is also reflected in the works of South African artist Vuyo Mabheka, who, with his Popihuse series (Collegio Venturoli), delves into his memories and represents the reality from which he comes through drawing and collage. African apartheid and the artist’s suffering shine through in his works, which, with a deliberately naive aesthetic, unsettle the viewer, transporting them into memories and events that are perceived without ever fully revealing themselves.
Moira Ricci, “Dove il cielo è più vicino – Poderi #8”, 2014 – 2017, inkjet print, courtesy Moira Ricci
Other interpretations of this theme are explored by artists who explore the role of women (Kelly O’Brien, Spazio Carbonesi), the permeability between internal and external environments (Mikael Olsson, Collegio Venturoli), the representation of life within the artist’s home, the border between Europe and Asia (Matei Bejenaru, Palazzo Bentivoglio), and finally, the reflection on a past event that has much to do with the present, reconstructing the face of a lost community that today, thanks to this project, regains part of its essence (Forensic Architecture, Palazzo Bentivoglio). In this edition of Fotoindustria, the deepest and most sensitive nature of man is explored extensively, constructing a puzzle of associations and references that, through the medium of photography, present themselves to the viewer in all their complexity. Starting from the home seen as a physical structure, we open up spaces that go far beyond this element because, as Emanuele Coccia writes in his book Filosofia della Casa, the home «is a psychic artifact, even before it is an architectural one. It is the result of the mutual domestication between things and people. It is the extension of what we do at birth: building intimacy with what surrounds us».
Samuel Tonelli
Info:
Fotoindustria
07/11/2025 – 14/12/2025
Fondazione MAST (Manifattura di Arti, Sperimentazione e Tecnologia)
Via Speranza 42 40133 Bologna
www.mast.org
Always connected to the art world, Samuel Tonelli attended the course in Art Education and Communication at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna and furthered his studies with the two-year master’s program in Education and Cultural Mediation of Artistic Heritage. After gaining experience mediating in various exhibitions and teaching art history at the art high school in Bologna, he developed a passion for art writing, which he sees as a powerful means of expression capable of opening up visions, broadening horizons and enriching the understanding of diverse perspectives on reality.
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