On November 3, 2021, in the CAMERA Project Room, the exhibition How to Secure a Country + will be open to the public, the first solo exhibition of the artist Salvatore Vitale (Palermo, 1986) presented in an Italian institution. Investigating different ways of representing power in the contemporary world, the exhibition offers a reflection on issues connected today both on a political and social level: bodies and their possibility of movement, physical and digital barriers, the visibility and invisibility of authorities, social control and its forms. For the occasion, the collaboration with OGR Torino, project partner, was started, which will host an installation by Vitale in the spaces of Corso Castelfidardo 22 during the days of the Turin Art Week.

The exhibition, curated by Giangavino Pazzola, consists of over forty works created with different media and belonging to two groups of works, relating to as many long-term researches carried out by Vitale from 2014 to today. Most of them belong to the “How to Secure a Country +” series (2014 - 2019), a neutral and uncritical account of the Swiss national security system explored from within. A representation that avoids the reporting temptation of action to orient itself on a cataloging rich in descriptive and - at the same time - enigmatic details. Articulating the discourse in several chapters, Vitale reconstructs an exhaustive picture of the security system of a state, leading the viewer to reflect on the idea of protection in the relationship between authority and individual.

Along with these, the exhibition path also includes two works from the “Persuasive System” project, a research begun by the artist in 2020, and currently still ongoing, focusing on the theme of the influence of digital surveillance in the social control of individuals. In the East Court, in front of the main entrance of OGR Torino, there is the installation of three surveillance cameras that record in real time the passage of people in a delimited area, and indicated by means of a graphic sign, in compliance with the European directives for the installation of surveillance systems. The images will be simultaneously transmitted live both on the large screens set up in the OGR foyer and on two monitors installed in CAMERA. After the first week of the exhibition, the installation in OGR will be turned off to relive in the videos at CAMERA and, thus, reinforce the idea of pervasiveness of surveillance in today's social life. Also in the latter environment, to complete the path, the installation of a video-essay created for the occasion by Vitale, with which the re-enactment of a social experiment on people's behavior is staged. Combining still and moving images, archival footage, factual data and text, the work uses the metaphor of the airport to reveal the paradoxes inherent in the logic of systemic surveillance, highlighting the need to pay greater attention to the processes of homologation of collective behaviors and the systems that regulate their formation.