On the occasion of Black History Month Turin - Second edition, an exhibition dedicated to Afro-descendant history and culture, promoted by the Associazione Donne Africa Sub-Saharana and Second Generation, in collaboration with Piedmontese bodies and institutions, Palazzo Madama - Civic Museum of Ancient Art proposes, from 3 to 27 February 2023, the exhibition Congo Italia. Rethinking the past, curated by Palazzo Madama, the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography of the University of Turin and the Intercultural Center of the City of Turin.

The exhibition presents a selection of sixteen photographs taken by Carlo Sesti (1873-1954), an engineer, who from 1900 to 1919 was at the service of the construction companies of the railway lines of the Congo Free State, later Belgian Congo (1908-1960 ). Sesti was able to travel to different parts of the country and to portray landscapes, populations, fellow workers, following the models of a certain colonialist photography of the time. The photographs, printed with silver salts on the occasion of the exhibition, are part of a nucleus of 343 plates made by Sesti and preserved today in the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography of the University of Turin, recently restored thanks to the "Strategia Fotografia 2020" project of the MiC.

On the other hand, the central showcase displays some figures of power made in wood by the Luba and Songye populations, which were acquired by another engineer, Tiziano Veggia (1893-1957), during his stay in the Congo and donated in 1955 to the Civic Museum of Turin - Palazzo Madama.

Italy's interest in the immense Congolese territory manifested itself at the end of the 19th century, when numerous Italian workers (doctors, engineers, technicians, magistrates and soldiers) were employed by the Independent State of Congo of Leopold II of Belgium in the systematic exploitation of of the region. In the early twentieth century an international campaign denounced the atrocities suffered by the populations, leading Belgium to establish the colony.

The Italian participation in one of the most violent episodes of the colonization of Africa has left numerous traces: in Turin, the collections of artifacts and images of the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography of the University and of the Museum of Ancient Art of Palazzo Madama remind us of this past forgotten. A past that today, in the context of a profoundly multicultural society, it is more than ever necessary to rethink.