In how many ways can the body be expressed? When does it become public and when does it remain private? How necessary were bodies understood in a political guise for the progress of ideas and society? “Cortona On The Move” is an ambitious and fully successful photographic project, thanks to the commitment of the ON THE MOVE Cultural Association, which for fourteen years has organized this fundamental event in Cortona to immerse oneself in the contemporary of the eighth art. If photography is an investigation form that requires eyes capable of investigating the visible and the invisible, the town near Arezzo is characterized as an essential base for orienting oneself in the chaotic world of images, becoming one of the capitals of individual and collective sensitivity of our time.
Mario Nunes Vais, “Female nude portrait on a stool”, 1900-1910, © Archivi Alinari, Firenze; Myriam Boulos, from the series “Sexual Fantasies” © Myriam Boulos / Magnum Photos, courtesy Cortona On The Move
Spread across six stations, “Cortona On The Move” can authoritatively count on a large group of important sponsors, various patronages, ever-increasing and significant partnerships and collaborations. The cover photo is part of a thematic project by the Lebanese artist Myriam Boulos who questioned the sexual fantasies of her compatriots. The message of “Sexual Fantasies” is identity-based: it is women, holders of their own bodies, who speak about it and not the object of other people’s considerations. We are in Fortezza del Girifalco, the Medici military fortress that hosts a particularly historical and political section of the festival. If the representation of Jesus that the Polish photographer Paweł Jaszczuk sends us is pop because pop can be the use and consumption of the great evangelizer (project provocatively titled “¥€$U$”), the collaboration with the prestigious and rich photographic heritage of the Florentine Fondazione Alinari per la Fotografia offers us an emotionally destabilizing journey curated by Nicola Lagioia and Chiara Tagliaferri. “Celestial bodies” is the project characterized by an unconventional gaze of the curators and centered on a powerful and evocative black and white triptych, introduced by a large photograph of a dead newborn. Incredibly contemporary, if one thinks of some summer controversies in the Olympic context, is the series regarding Sicilian children portrayed in their nudity by Wilhelm von Gloeden, embellished by a sensual and thunderous portrait of a hermaphrodite. Even more powerful are the late 19th century images by Mario Nunes Vais who portrays female nudes disfigured by the family shame of his time and the syncretism between religious rite and inexplicable magic in the suspended human figures by Antonio Trombetta.
This Is the End, from the series “Figurative coffins of Ghana”, © Regula Tschumi, courtesy Cortona On The Move
If the first room shows us the photograph of real death, the historical and collective project “This is the End”, curated by Paolo Woods & Irene Opezzo, explores the blatant display of death, sometimes iconic and universal as in the case of Che Guevara and Lenin, sometimes grotesque as in the kitsch shapes of the coffins chosen in some areas of Ghana, sometimes painful as a dripping in the comparison between the face of someone who is ill and the same face once the last breath has been exhaled, sometimes macabre as in the case of Indonesian farmers posing with the corpse of a loved one, or again in the apparently cinematic guise of real photos taken at the crime scene by the New York police. If death constitutes the end of life, thanks to photography the depicted death constitutes its temporal continuation. The network built over time by the organizers of “Cortona On The Move” has, among its most recent partners, the photography collective Cesura and Intesa Sanpaolo, thanks to which we can immerse ourselves in a project set in northern Italy with the significant title “Cronache d’acqua”, a collage of stories that have the body of water at their center, from the sources to the mouths, from industrial to agricultural exploitation.
Pelle Cass, from the series “Crowded Fields”, © Pelle Cass, courtesy Cortona On The Move
From the Medici fortress of Girifalco, the historic center of Cortona can be reached by following the Via Crucis enriched by a famous Cortonese, Gino Severini, with the fourteen Easter stations created by him with the mosaic technique. Here the open-air exhibition space is the prerogative of a single artist and the chosen one for the 2024 edition is the New Yorker Pelle Cass who interprets the theme by massifying it to the highest power. His sports blow-ups, entitled “Crowded Fields”, extraordinarily disconcerting and chaotic, are the result of a meticulous technique: Cass places the camera on a tripod, takes thousands of photographs of the sports fields and assembles the selected figures in a final image that becomes a sort of crowded mosaic of bodies that occupy the space in all directions.
Ken Graves & Eva Lipman,frrom the series “Restraint and Desire”, © Ken Graves & Eva Lipman, courtesy Cortona On The Move
Two photographers, Giulia Parlato & Giovanna Petrocchi, strengthen the collaboration between the festival and the Accademia Etrusca Cortonese with a project of dialogue between some photographs and a selection of artworks in the museum. “Muse” is the title of this project that investigates the representation of women in art and also the observing gaze of women visiting the museum rooms. Another artistic duo is the American one formed by Ken Graves & Eva Lipman who, with a project of composure and control, “Restraint and Desire”, tells us about an emotional range that lies between the two poles of the title. The photographs, exhibited in the rooms of the former Magazzino delle Carni, portray official American situations in which it is interesting to note the due containment of the protagonists and the creeping desire to let their desires erupt.
Niccolò Rastrelli, from the series “They Don’t Look Like Me”, © Niccolò Rastrelli, courtesy Cortona On The Move
Palazzo Baldelli, in the heart of the historic alleys of Cortona, is certainly the main venue of “Cortona On The Move”. There are twelve thematic series hosted in this medieval palace and the artistic and content register varies from the grotesque to the commitment, from the light to the dramatic. Alessandro Cinque documents a story of Peruvian resilience that goes beyond the dominant theme and allows us to learn about the collection of water from humidity by the inhabitants, most of them internal migrants, indigenous and poor, of some suburbs of the immense megalopolis of Lima. The protagonists are the Atrapanieblas, the drop catchers we would call them, capable of collecting and distributing, with the use of night nets, water for the next day. The Florentine Niccolò Rastrelli investigates the global phenomenon of cosplayers, creating in the observer, with his project “They Don’t Look Like Me”, a feeling of bewilderment in juxtaposing impassive and bourgeois parents with children dressed up as comic book heroes. Hungarian Szabolcs Barakonyi shows us an anthology of crime scenes with a project entitled “Cold Trail – Forensic Realism”, exposing key details of the crime scene. Gabriele Basilico, who is completely distant from the photography we usually associate with him, has fun with a Dadaist project on the border between eros and furniture that reminds us of the marks that different types of chairs leave on female buttocks. “Contact” is the absolutely coherent title of this thematic series with a strong ironic flavour.
Valery Poshtarov, from the series “Father and Son”, © Valery Poshtarov, courtesy Cortona On The Move
The same light-hearted and carefree tone is found in the bodies of the couples by Maurizio Berlincioni who, with his “Fotocoppie”, shows us naked couples (and families) sitting or lying on the famous red mouth-shaped sofa made by Gufram in the early 1970s. Carl Ander, on the other hand, does not take original photographs and, with the project paradoxically defined “Static Motion”, places the photos torn from the pages of vintage fitness magazines in an alienating context. Still in vintage terms, Matthieu Nicol shows us the real and strange situations of those who have had to undergo extreme tests in the American scientific and astronomical field, with the project also here with an extremely clear title: “Test Subjects”. Tender and familiar is the thematic series of fathers and sons by the Bulgarian Valery Poshtarov, winner of the second edition of the COTM Award with the project “Father and Son”. The parents and sons portrayed, generally from former Soviet areas, hold hands in a pose, sometimes giving the impression of a gesture that is missing or is rare in their respective daily lives. “Androids in the Woods” is the intriguing title of the project by the Spanish Toni Amengual who, starting from the growing loneliness induced by social media and the consequent digital dematerialization of bodies, moves to a peripheral and sparsely populated location in Finland, photographing some people and their conversations on dating apps.
Carmen Winant, from the series “The Last Safe Abortion”, © Carmen Winant, courtesy Cortona On The Move
The tone of the content becomes much more powerful with “American Mirror”, a photographic project by the American Philip Montgomery that reveals the United States almost live. The star-spangled society has recently faced a crossroads: on one side the disturbing grin of Donald Trump (magnificent black and white), on the other the social and authentically democratic demands. These demands are found in another project that is much closer to the theme of the body: “The Last Safe Abortion” is a rich photographic collage that traces the half century of legality of the right to abortion. Carmen Winant is an activist photographer very close to feminist assistance networks and in this thematic series she gives voice to health workers, protesters, women activists, doctors, anesthetists.
Rehab Eldalil, from the series “From the Ashes, I Rose” , من الرماد نهضت © Rehab Eldalil, courtesy Cortona On The Move
The declination of the body by Egyptian photographer Rehab Eldalil is absolutely unmissable: her project “From the Ashes, I Rose” was born from the collaboration with the Jordanian hospital headquarters of Médecins sans frontières. The victims of war parade before our eyes, with their disfigured and tortured faces and bodies reconstructed by the surgery of volunteers. From the ashes one can rise again and the great merit of the Arab artist is to conquer the intimacy and stories of those who have submitted to her gaze. Truly in an off-site location, in a building of the Camucia train station, the body is declined as a canvas. “The Body as a Canvas”, with photographs selected by Lars Lindemann & Paolo Woods, offers us the contemporary epic of the tattoo, an art form (or a vulgar disfigurement) that today reigns supreme and can make our gaze equally fascinated and disgusted.
The XIV edition of Cortona On The Move is accompanied by the homonymous catalog curated by Paolo Woods.
Info:
Cortona On The Move 2024: Body of Evidence
11/07-03/11/2024
Various locations in Cortona
www.cortonaonthemove.com
I am Giovanni Crotti and I was born in June 1968 in Reggio Calabria to be reborn in June 2014 in Piacenza, the city where I live. My income is guaranteed by digital consultancy, and I then spend it largely on art and letterature: I have been and am a content curator and organizer of cultural events for artists, galleries and institutional spaces, as well as a writer of exhibition reviews, creatives of every era and books.
NO COMMENT