Hidden Cities & Hybrid Identities | Rome (Italy)
Declensions of identities

The city of Rome was the fascinating setting of Hidden Cities & Hybrid Identities, an international video art festival and photography exhibition that opened from the 6th to the 8th of July. The appealing venue of the Ripa Hotel & Ripa Cafè hosted the artworks of twenty-nine video artists and fifteen photographers selected for the exhibition from all over the world. The project, organized by International ArtExpo and curated by Luca Curci and Fabiana Roscioli, orbited around the concept of the hybridization between physical and social identities in contemporary cities and wound its way through the different aspects and results of this contamination.

“The choice of the city of Rome and of the hotel as the setting of the event is not coincidental; on the contrary, the nature and characteristics of these two places are perfectly integrated into the dense structure of the concept. Rome was the first big metropolis in the history of mankind. In ancient Rome there were different and ‘institutionalized’ kinds of social identities: being or reaching the status of Roman citizen meant to have the maximum grade of political and legal privileges, and the granting of Roman citizenship’s social identities to allies and the conquered was one of the bedrocks of Rome’s success.
On the other hand, holding the exhibition in a hotel is significant: the hotel is one of the most representative non-places of our contemporary society. As coined and defined by Marc Augé, non-places are ‘spaces in which no lasting social relations are established (transit spaces, spaces people pass through)’, where ‘there was a total absence of symbolic ties, and evident social deficits’. Non-places are probably one of the most complex and interesting results of the modern hybridization between people and contemporary cities during this ‘supermodernity’ period and, at the same time, they are ‘the product and agent of a contemporary crisis in social relations and consequently in the construction of individual identities through such relations’.

In this relevant contest, the artworks show us the multitude of facets of the cross-breeding between public and private, identity and society, and body and urban setting.
We assist the invasions and contaminations between public and private spaces; the kind of ‘intimate alienation’ that flows from our habit of relating with others through the screen of a device; to urban patches that combine themselves in new worlds; to fluid fragments of cities and houses that guard private existences against our external eye.
We are witnesses of our effort to live divided in two opposite ‘human suits’; to wear a public mask that seems so unfamiliar to our human face; to re-birth as new creatures capable of adapting to the continuous changes and mutations of the surrounding environments.

We preserve traditions changing them into new forms; we learn to survive and protect our human identities, from the evolutionary lessons of animals and we discover the intimacy and common legacy between all human beings, despite our desire for uniqueness.
The exhibition was visited every day by many international visitors and Roman citizens who were really intrigued by the theme and its several declensions”. Marica Denora

Marica Denora, born in Bari in 1988, graduated in Mediation and Intercultural Communication. Beauty addict, with a huge love for art and books, currently works for International ArtExpo and It’s LIQUID Group.

International ArtExpo would like to acknowledge all the video artists and photo artists for their effort, vision, and passion for contemporary art.

International ArtExpo is a not-for-profit organization that provides a significant forum for cultural dialogue between all artists from different cultures and countries. We depend on your support of you. ArtExpo is grateful to all of the institutions, corporations, and individuals who support our efforts. We work with a number of national and international galleries as well as publishers, museums, curators and writers from all over the world. We help artists through solo and group exhibitions, gallery representation, magazine reviews and advertisements, press releases, internet promotion, as well as various curatorial projects.

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To download the complete press release with the photo reportage of the event please click here

International ArtExpo
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lucacurci@lucacurci.com
www.lucacurci.com/artexpo

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It’s LIQUID Group
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