Trajectories: Research Itineraries inspired by the work of Tina Modotti

The Embassy of Italy and the Italian Institute of Culture of Mexico City present a guided exhibition of Trajectories: Research Itineraries inspired by the work of Tina Modotti with curator Anna Dusi.

In 1922, the life of a young activist and photographer of Italian origin changed forever when she arrived in Mexico in 1922. What she experienced in this country determined her political position and made her discover that a camera could be a revolutionary weapon. The woman behind the camera was called Tina Modotti.

Mexico was the source, promoter and witness of her photographic work and her political commitment. 100 years after the arrival of Tina Modotti in Mexico, this exhibition aims to celebrate her creative and artistic legacy through the eyes of six creators who, through their work, interpret and reflect on the artistic and social ideals for which the dissident soul of Mexico Tina struggled throughout her giddy existence.

The Italian artists Alessia Rollo, Alberto Mesirca, Serena Vittorini and the Mexican artists Cannon Bernáldez, Cecilia Ramírez, Eunice Adorno, relying on a multimedia language composed of photos, testimonies, installations and performative acts, will merge the different languages ​​in a cognitive experience that is at the same time an emotional and human geographical map.

The spaces of the Italian Institute of Culture will become the stage in which contemporary voices and gazes, through different artistic languages, will be inspired by the figure of Tina Modotti and the ideas that her images, beyond the reality they represent, they reveal to us

— Italian Institute of Culture

Many objects affect and challenge society. However, only some of these have reached the deconstructive potential to turn our hearts and souls upside down. One of these creative reorganizing forces and methods is photography: a visual language and a tangible grammar manifest in the world, but above all, a tool for all ethics of investigation of the imaginary.

Tina Modotti's photographic gaze fearlessly engages with her own historical and material realities. I am convinced that the formation of anything that can be called an artistic vocation can only be the result of collisions between the human impulse towards creation and a number of social forces that are adverse to us. In this way, this exhibition is an investigative experience in which "six interpreters" (each with their particular approach) present a critical perspective through which an infinity of experiences and information become the object of scrutiny.

We live in uncertain times where social and civil rights are constantly threatened. Tina's revolutionary impetus, always against universal hatred and in rejection of the hegemonic order, provides us with a sensitive and committed look at a chaotic world in motion.

Her dissident spirit lives in her photographs, in her reading of the path to female and human liberation. An unrestricted commitment that, as we know, would seriously cost him in the last phase of it.

This exhibition is a container for different processes of activist language and praxis. An interior journey with a strong allegorical charge that invites us to read the work of the artists as texts. That is to say, as images inscribed in a specific language but open to interpretation, where the meaning of the pieces (from the artist's hand) questions, develops and materializes avant-garde formalist and symbolist traditions. The artists not only use the language of photography, they also use other media such as testimony, installation and performance. These "interpretations" combine languages ​​to shape a cognitive experience that is, at the same time, an affective and geographical map of humanity.

— Anna Dusi, curator

Artists: Alessia Rollo, Alberto Mesirca, Cannon Bernáldez, Cecilia Ramírez, Eunice Adorno and Serena Vittorini

Image: Cecilia Ramirez