Alessandro Valeri
An Iron Ring
Curated by Fiorella Bassan and Giorgia Calò

MAXXI, Sala Carlo Scarpa

January 16 - 26.2020

Opening January 16 at 6.30pm

From the 16th to the 26th of January 2020 the MAXXI - Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo will host in the Sala Carlo Scarpa, An Iron Ring , a project by Alessandro Valeri curated by Fiorella Bassan and Giorgia Calò.
From the 16th to the 26th of January 2020 the MAXXI - Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo will host in the Sala Carlo Scarpa, An Iron Ring a project by Alessandro Valeri curated by Fiorella Bassan and Giorgia Calò.

An Iron Ring closes the loop on the artistic and personal journey Valeri embarked on 2011, when he firstly visited the orphanage of Tzippory, close to Nazareth. The institute, with the Catholic nuns and the Jewish, Muslims and Christians volunteers, appeared to Valeri an island of interreligious tolerance and collaboration. This experience impresses him profoundly: the foster house becomes for him a symbol, a “totem” of a “promise of happiness, which can exist beyond the current state of things. The photographic, video and audio notes he takes in his visits are the live materials from which emerges, in 2015, the exhibition Sepphoris, for the 56th Venice Biennale, at Molino Stucky. The exhibition marks also the beginning of the tangible commitment of the artist to bring about a change, through the donation of the artworks to the institute.
Later, the totem will originate other experiences: Lasciami entrare at MACRO Testaccio, in 2016, where the didactic workshops begin, and Una sola possibilità, at MACRO in Via Nizza, in 2017, where the prospect of change takes the character of dissent and creative rebellion.

An Iron Ring, designed by Valeri for the Sala Carlo Scarpa at MAXXI as a physical and mental laboratory for children and adults, is structured in four “movements”, linked by narrative loops which convey the story of the artistic journey in its complexity.