On the occasion of the celebrations for the 700th anniversary of Dante's death, the MAXXI National Museum of 21st Century Arts presents the exhibition Dante's Inferno by Valentina Vannicola, curated by Simona Antonacci, scheduled at the MAXXI Architecture Archives Center from June 17 to September 26 2021. This year the project will become part of the Museum's Photography Collections.
From the entrance through the gate of Hell, passing through the souls of the damned waiting on the banks of the Acheron, those of non-believers suspended in limbo, those of the simoniacs, condemned to be turned upside down in the earth, and again the only vegetable body of the suicides and the souls dragged by the storm of Paolo and Francesca, the author takes us on an imaginative journey through the Circles of Hell.
The series consists of fifteen photographs, set in the Lazio Maremma and made involving the inhabitants themselves as actors.
In Valentina Vannicola's work, attributable to the genre of staged photography, the literary component functions as a track to follow, deepen and reinterpret: it is a sort of input to start a free and personal inventive process that leads to the visualization of an image that takes shape in the first instance in a sketch. The image is then concretized in the final shot, the result of a complex production work in which the author takes on the role of screenwriter, costume designer, director, as well as photographer. The rigorous sequence and the meticulously studied shots build a concise, tight, but also subtly symbolic story, which interprets Dante's words as if they were a script and returns them in the form of images.
After the Graziadei Prize for Photography exhibition, with the works of the last two winners of the Alba Zari Prize and Rachele Maistrello, the MAXXI study continues on young female authors through this focus in the Archives Center.