Lo davamo per scontato
with Alien, Zehra Doğan, Victor Fotso Nyie, Gaia De Megni, Alice Ronchi, Selma Selman, Davide Stucchi, TOMBOYS DON'T CRY, Chloe Wise, Xiao Zhiyu
Curated by Marco Arrigoni and Giacomo Pigliapoco
from May 6th to June 18th, 2023
Sala Dogana, Palazzo Ducale
Piazza Giacomo Matteotti 9, Genoa
Photo courtesy Tiziano Ercoli e Riccardo Giancola
Lo davamo per scontato (We Took It for Granted) is an exhibition that, through the gaze of ten international artists under 35, aims to shed light on the continuing urgency and significance of the need to fight for human rights. Exacerbated by the war, the pandemic, and the climate crisis, the regression of political recognition of minorities is currently ongoing and continuously worsening. Issues surrounding abortion, recognition of children from non-heteronormative couples, gender equality in careers, freedom of speech and expression, and respect for artistic expression are constantly under scrutiny by global governance systems, not so much to protect and strengthen them, but rather to question them and potentially abolish them. In the center of this exhibition there is its very essence: the generation of artists involved. Having grown up in a cultural context increasingly favorable to the recognition of rights and, above all, to respect for the concept of individual diversity, they now witness the crumbling of the value system on which they relied. This means that the battles fought by women and men who came before them, tirelessly striving for small but essential improvements, are now in danger. The artworks presented in the exhibition demonstrate how today’s artists under-35 bring attention to these aspects. The means to do so may vary, with explicit messages or subtle hints of direction, but they reflect the necessity to refocus on the centrality of respecting the individual’s uniqueness as the foundation of a contemporary democratic society.