Curated by Michele Bertolino and Elena Magini.
When: 6 May – October 2023 at the Centro per l’arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci
Volevo vedermi negli occhi is the first solo exhibition in an Italian public institution of the photographer and RUFA lecturer Lina Pallotta (n.1955, Rome). Since the 1980s, Pallotta has worked on photographic projects with a strong political and ethical focus, recognising the medium as having a strong social task.
The Centro Pecci presents a selection of photographs from the project Porpora, taken at Porpora Marcasciano, trans activist. The two met on the same side of the barricades in a hot Naples during the phantasmagorical 1970s and formed a deep bond. In 1990 Pallotta began photographing Porpora: these are moments of everyday scenes that cross the personal, the political and movement contexts, the disparate geographies of their encounters (the East Village, Rome, Bologna, the Neapolitan countryside) with a close gaze and affective attention: a bodily and immediate touch emerges.
Volevo vedermi negli occhi welcomes a prolonged, unfinished portrait of the trans activist: a friend, a companion and a person. Blurred images, contrasting black/white scenes, quick and ephemeral moments restore the narrative and the intertwining of times, places and bodies.
Curated by Michele Bertolino and Elena Magini, the exhibition is accompanied by the publication Porpora, published by Nero, which collects a selection of Lina’s photos, a visual archive with a possible path through the history of the homosexual and trans movement from the 1970s onwards, and some essays on Lina Pallotta’s photographic work. The volume is the winner of the Italian Council 10 call.
On the cover: Lina Pallotta, Porpora – San Bartolomeo in Galdo, 2018, digital printing on paper hahnemühle fine art barita, 120×80 cm. Courtesy of the artist.
