The majestic Palazzo de’ Toschi, which during Arte Fiera had already been designated to host previous Art City exhibitions, once again becomes an exhibition venue in this 2026 edition, presenting a conceptually driven project that reflects on the notions of reality, representation and illusion within the field of art, using the tools that belong to it.
Francisco Tropa, “Miss America”, installation view at Palazzo de’ Toschi, ph. Carlo Favero, courtesy Banca di Bologna
The exhibition titled Miss America, curated by the outgoing director of Arte Fiera, Simone Menegoi, is the first solo show in Italy by Francisco Tropa, one of the most significant Portuguese artists of the past three decades. Born in Lisbon in 1968, he represented Portugal at the 54th Venice Biennale (2011) and has participated in the Istanbul Biennial, the Melbourne Biennial, the São Paulo Biennial, Manifesta in Ljubljana, as well as in major solo exhibitions at institutions such as the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, the Museu Serralves in Porto and the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco. In his artistic practice, he combines installation, sculpture, drawing, photography, film and performance. He employs a conceptual language, creating hybridizations between art and technical ingenuity, using traditional materials such as bronze, glass and wood, as well as more archaic elements like sand, water, leaves and insects. His poetics investigate (generally collective) memory and the flow of a non-linear, suspended time that intertwines the present, historical time and the mythical dimension.
Francisco Tropa, “Miss America”, installation view at Palazzo de’ Toschi, ph. Carlo Favero, courtesy Banca di Bologna
The exhibition consists of two works, both dated 2025. The first, Lantern with clock mechanism, is a projection of shadows produced by a small clockwork mechanism placed in front of light sources, part of a cycle already presented at the 2011 Biennale in. Similar operations can be found in earlier works – for example, one in which a lantern illuminates the image of a drop of water or shows the movement of sand inside an hourglass, again with an evident connection to the passage of time; or another in which it is placed in relation to cobwebs, dried leaves and dead insects, shaping a sort of contemporary vanitas, recalling the seventeenth-century still-life genre that stages the inevitable fragility of existence. Time, together with movement, is central to the artist’s poetics, which often intertwine art with philosophy and history. A distinctive feature of his practice is working in cycles that may take years to complete and are often set in dialogue with one another.
Francisco Tropa, “Miss America”, installation view at Palazzo de’ Toschi, ph. Carlo Favero, courtesy Banca di Bologna
Tropa uses this type of mechanical object inspired by magic lanterns, ancestors of the slide projector and, until the nineteenth century, the principal pre-cinematic device – a theater of shadows that relies on the power of memory, a return to the origins of creation. At the same time, as Simone Menegoi observes, the work opens up further references: the procession of shadows recalls the allegory of Plato’s Myth of the Cave (found in Book VII of The Republic), where «the prisoner freed from his chains and having left the cave returns to it after having learned the difference between reality and illusion, not to teach the other prisoners this difference and induce them to leave the cave (…) but rather to share with them the fascination of appearances and of the discipline traditionally based on appearances: art».
Francisco Tropa, “Miss America”, installation view at Palazzo de’ Toschi, ph. Carlo Favero, courtesy Banca di Bologna
The second space (the Conference Hall), bathed in natural or artificial light depending on the time of visit, hosts a large installation that inaugurates a new cycle for the artist, to be further developed in an upcoming exhibition at the Jocelyn Wolff gallery in Paris. It could be described as an extended drying rack occupying the full width of the central hall, composed of ropes stretching from wall to wall, supported by bamboo canes (which are actually bronze casts, like the clothespins, thus invoking the concept of mimesis). From them hang small signs (silkscreens on paper reproducing old inscriptions from Tropa’s collection) referring to the world of catering – “back soon”, “house specialty”. A likely reference is to Portuguese immigration at the beginning of the twentieth century and to the dream of a new life, which often collided with inevitable downsizing and the need to take up humble jobs. During the days of the fair, the installation included a dynamic activation by six young performers (three men and three women from the world of dance), engaged in hanging large white sheets with slow movements after removing them from basins, giving life to a true choreography in a continuous process of installation and de-installation. A simple, seemingly minor, and usually private action, relocated into an institutional context, becomes a poetic and public act that invites us to dwell even on gestures destined to fade away. It is an intervention that reveals a nostalgia for an “analog” past world, recalling black-and-white cinematic imagery typical of neorealist films. And speaking of cinema, the hanging sheets function as screens onto which the shadows and stories of those who pass through them are projected. The white sheets also evoke blank canvases, pages yet to be written, but also shrouds and flags recalling surrender, truce and peace.
Francisco Tropa, “Miss America”, installation view at Palazzo de’ Toschi, ph. Carlo Favero, courtesy Banca di Bologna
And what about the title? How does the effervescent and mysterious Miss America, deliberately left unexplained by the artist, relate to what has been said? The title itself contains an evident ambiguity that allows for a polysemic reading parallel to the artwork, reinforcing it. It includes the word “miss”, with its double meaning of “young woman” and “to lack”. Following this thread, that “Miss America,” celebrated as an archetype of perfection, possibility, inclusion and meritocracy – that America where countless artists of the last century found refuge and prestige – becomes a country that is “missing”, in that it no longer represents the American Dream, but is increasingly inclined to defend its strategic interests through economic pressure, alliances and military interventions. Tropa’s practice reflects on time, memory and human history, seeking to engage the viewer in the process of meaning-making, raising questions and moving beyond the seductive surface, toward an art capable of uniting aesthetics with an ethical dimension.
Info:
Francisco Tropa. Miss America
3/02/2026 – 01/03/2026
curated by Simone Menegoi
Palazzo de’ Toschi
Sala Convegni Banca di Bologna
Piazza Minghetti 4/D, Bologna
After classical studies, she enrolled at the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy in Bologna, graduating in History of Cinema (DAMS) and later in Art History. She obtained a Master in Communication for cultural enterprises. Journalist and critic, she collaborates with various print and online magazines specialized in the artistic and cultural sector, including Finestre sull’Arte, Segno, Exibart, Zeta-International magazine of poems and research, Punto e Linea Magazine, Gagarin Orbite Culturali. She loves art in all its forms, preferring modern, contemporary and research.
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