WILDER MANN at MAN NUORO, Italy

27 juin 2025 - 07 novembre 2025

MAN_Museo d’arte provincia di Nuoro

Via Sebastiano Satta 27 - 08100 Nuoro France

Minor Islands. Photographic Notes from 1990 to Today

(…)

The exhibition highlights how this representation has evolved over the past twenty-five years, marked by an expanded visual exploration that embraces new ways of engaging with both the territory and its communities. The emerging symbolic and ideological portrayals of the island’s space provide an insight into a range of themes, from cultural histories to the transformation of contemporary society, while also revealing glimpses of persistent subordination. By turning their gaze to the coastline and the sea, as well as to the interiors of the island’s larger urban centres, artists have developed a visual vocabulary of Sardinia that situates it culturally within the broader Mediterranean context, prior even to its placement within the Italian one.

The exhibition opens with a prologue-tribute to four distinguished photographers who, over the years, have devoted significant works to Sardinia, both as part of their own artistic journeys and through their reinterpretations of the island’s landscape. Mimmo Jodice’s marine metaphysics, rooted in Mediterranean culture and captured at Punta Pedrosa (1998) and Molara (1999); Bernard Plossu’s poetic wanderings between Carloforte and La Maddalena (2002); Ralph Gibson’s ironic reimagining of the nude (1986); and Massimo Vitali’s striking documentation of the tourist presence on beaches such as Poetto (1995) collectively introduce the viewer to the exhibition and to a new century.

Divided into monographic rooms, the exhibition at the MAN in Nuoro presents photographers who interpret contemporary life through a range of thematic lenses. These include the enduring role of masks in ancient traditions and rituals, revisited by Salvatore Ligios (2007) to explore questions of identity and the erosion of local culture, and by Charles Fréger (2010–2011); the eternal – and often futile – anticipation of social, cultural and economic renewal, exemplified by the inauguration of architectural structures for the aborted G8 summit in La Maddalena (Giovanna Silva, 2009); and the dialogue between past and present in the Monument to Garibaldi and the granite fortifications on Caprera island (Paola De Pietri, 2022). Practices of interaction and participation between art and community emerge in the exploration of diverse notions of citizenship, as seen in the works of Marinella Senatore (2013), Vanessa Winship and George Georgiou (2014). Meanwhile, Jacopo Benassi (2021) and Lorenzo Vitturi (2022) address the concept of isolation through their respective projects in Donori and Valle della Luna.

Curated by Walter Guadagnini and Giangavino Pazzola