DIASPORA: SPHERICAL THINKING BETWEEN ART AND SPACE
f.dona@rosamundiart.it
www.fondazionedonadallerose.org
The term diaspora derives from the combination of the Greek prefix “diá” and the verb “speírein,” and in its original meaning it refers to dispersion, dissemination. It is a phenomenon that has affected many communities throughout human history, a transnational sociopolitical configuration, an existential condition that ensures the survival of a group forced to disperse. Its principle is also its effect: the collective, forced dispersion of an ethnic group in multiple directions due to major political, economic, or natural causes. When a sovereign national community undergoes fragmentation, transforming into a set of expatriate communities hosted by other nations, these groups are inevitably identified as ethnic minorities and, in some cases, supported, while in others, oppressed. The representation of the diasporic feeling, as well as the widespread desire for a possible return, is part of an inner journey, regardless of one’s position. It is a collective experience extending across time and space: not merely a journey, but the creation of a new self through the affirmation of a new community, a new “Dwelling” for all, in the hope that it may be the last, a safe harbor, a new maternal womb in memory of the original one. The dynamic process of continuous renegotiation of collective cultural identity becomes the memory of the motherland. Thus, collective memory is entrusted with the responsibility of transmitting feeling, pride, light, and its “projectors” onto historical fragmentations. Oral tradition, even before written tradition, merges with the group’s willpower, with the tenacity of a negotiation process between the old and the new, between the identity of origin and the natural hybridization of the host culture. A sense of alienation persists, of incomplete belonging, accompanied by a certain appreciation of the uniqueness of one’s own path of estrangement.
Artists, not always aligned with their time, are often forerunners and anticipators of “visions,” almost like seers. This anticipation of knowledge and the ability to see “beyond” binds them together in a kind of diaspora, a solitude and consciousness, a solitude of consciousness, that strengthens and sharpens research, self-criticism, and confrontation. To present a research path through artistic means is to make visible not only the results but also the questions, transformations, and relationships activated along the way. The exhibition explores the experience of artists in motion, highlighting their “emotional cartographies,” their roots, and their wounds. Diaspora is often the unexpected and unpredictable cause of a powerful effect that generates new life and unforeseen surprises, much like Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s “black swan” theory. The quintessential diaspora of artists is that triggered by the Sack of Rome, which led to the spread of Mannerism throughout Europe, with figures such as Rosso Fiorentino and Perino del Vaga. Yet history is filled with diasporic events in which art is the sacrificed victim, but which, through suffering, cultivates its greatest regenerative power, its rebirth merely postponed. The journey of diasporic art is far from over. On the contrary, it seems only the beginning of a phase in which a multitude of voices, from Native Americans to Africa to New Zealand, can be heard with greater strength and awareness. Diaspora: Dissonances in F Minor is not a celebration, but an opportunity to reflect on how art can contribute to redefining identities and memories, not through colonial or exoticizing lenses, but through an authentic and innovative gaze, free from misleading instrumentalization. The consumption of others’ diversity rejects the spectacle of integration. Indigenous creativity is active knowledge, restorative and reconciling, in its disobedience to dominant historical narratives. The theme of dissonance evokes notes placed in the lower part of the staff, those that give rhythm, less visible yet present and audible. These are the notes “in minor keys” that keep time, in a kind of mimesis with the whole. Dissonance is a silent presence, rarely shouted, yet declared by history despite attempts to obscure it. Dissonances in F minor are hidden voices that challenge the margins of time with unexpected determination. Dissonant artists, in relation to the communities in which they live, are survivors who have created their own lyricism, by ideology or by chance, renewing the cultural alphabet. Rhythm is a structural part of the musical staff; rhythm is life and the heartbeat; rhythm is an essential component of harmony. Dissonances in F Minor seeks to represent a dialectic that takes into account collectivity, human existence, and its relationship with the world and its diverse cultures and millennial experiences, overlooking nothing and no one. Everyone has a role in the symphony of life: both victim and perpetrator, aggressor and attacked, the seduced and the abandoned, the exploited and the exploiter, the colonizer and the colonized. I accepted the invitation to curate seventeen artists from different parts of the world, extended by director Mama Anne of the Tissali Arts & Cultures Association. Our meeting had something almost magical about it, connecting Senegal, the “mother Africa,” as her name suggests, to everything I have experienced while traveling across the African continent, the Middle East, and the East. We met in a hall at the Ministry of Culture in Dakar, and from that moment this beautiful collaboration was born. The spark was the Dakar Biennale, known as Dak’Art, Biennale de l’Art Africain Contemporain, one of the most important art events in the world, along with the memory of Koyo Kouoh, just days after her passing. The delicacy and strength of the title she chose, in her role as director of the 61st Venice Biennale, In Minor Keys, created a bridge and a natural continuity with the previous edition, Foreigners Everywhere by Adriano Pedrosa. Over the past four years, Africa has been at the center of my research. In November 2025, I participated in the Dakar Biennale ON with the exhibition Art et Droit: Le Rythme de l’Humanité, focused on the Charte du Mandé of 1235, and earlier, in 2024, in Partcours, the International Contemporary Art Festival conceived by Tuscan ceramist Mauro Petroni, with the exhibitions Mouvement Symbiotique and Contre Courant, hosted by Loman Gallery. The African diaspora lies at the heart of the Dakar Biennale, whose historical ideological father is Léopold Sédar Senghor, the first president of post-colonial Senegal and a philosopher who created the concept of Négritude. This perspective has entered my very bloodstream and has become a fundamental lens through which I view art and curatorial practice. On the island of Ngor, I met many artists, young and older, of extraordinary talent, who suffer deeply from the limitations imposed on migration. Among them is Nalla Thioye, an artist capable of using both natural pigments and acrylics, often mixed with sand and shell dust. His work tells the story of young people in his villagepreparing for exodus, expressing the colorful optimism of dreaming to cross the sea and reach Europe. His paintings narrate the story of his people, the desire to surpass the horizon, the colors of imagination, through images of pirogues, locked in imaginary drawers like a physical border that, in most cases, remains inaccessible. The everyday life of his land becomes the measure of his inner diaspora: that of someone who longs to cross beyond the existence assigned to him, yet instead must train himself to contain that desire, mastering it through the force of his brush. Nalla co-founded in Dakar, together with Sarita Marchesi, the Contro Corrente foundation, aimed at raising awareness among Senegalese youth about the false illusions of mass clandestine migration, as well as the dangers of the sea that fill European news reports. They have seen many friends depart in pirogues. The fortunate ones returned, some alive, while others did not make it. The music of the kora has been replaced by the slow sound of the silence of death. Through theatrical, video, musical, and visual languages, Nalla expresses himself within a collective that brings together Senegalese and international artists in his gallery in Ngor, with the generosity typical of his people. This sense of forced isolation, almost a reversed diaspora, has strengthened both his personality and his artistic production. In Minor Keys, within this collateral event, is dedicated to all those talents who live and survive in the silence of their land, once the stage of unspeakable ruptures, from slavery to deportation, from coercive migration serving others, from the Middle East as early as the 1200s to Europe and across the ocean to the Americas. Ibou Ndoye, on the other hand, has brought his Africa to America with striking immediacy, captivating audiences with his colors, music, and painterly language. Memory dominates his canvases, as do the warmth and intensity of his art, which seems unstoppable in its movement and in the intersections of imagined figures. A little girl in a wheelchair appears to fly; the diaspora of her physical condition becomes merely an accessory, not a limitation. It is we who remain still, confined by the limits of our gaze, not her. Her face, hair, arms, and hands take over the foreground, and everything becomes harmony, precisely within the dissonance of the key of F minor. Yet the history of humanity continues to surprise us, like a whirlwind or a hurricane, cyclical in nature, reshuffling the cards, overturning everything, reversing, renewing, denying, generating, and regenerating. Today, African art, like Afro music, dominates the international scene, whether prehistoric, ancient, or contemporary. Geographical maps change, globes change, identities, passports, and languages change, and above all, vocabularies change, because language is the expression of a people, a culture, and its traditions, even before recognition by international organizations. In the collective flattening imposed by the dominance of the world’s most widely spoken languages, English and Spanish, many peoples, languages, and traditions, those “in minor keys”, still have much to say, to teach, and to reveal. The itinerary of this exhibition travels through the world and the human spirit, crossing territories, languages, memories, images, sounds, and words, within the complexity of a research that is at once artistic, social, and personal. It translates into visual form the intensity and layering of experiences encountered along the way. It is a path of cultural and political reclamation, where memory and innovation, past and present, merge in vibrant rhythms of visual works that challenge colonial narratives. The results of this process do not lie solely in what has been displayed, but in what has been generated along the journey. This is the true meaning of the exhibition. It is a path of cultural and political reclamation, where memory and innovation, past and present intertwine, redefining the contemporaneity of art. Contemporary art becomes an act of self-preservation. Telling the everyday stories of a people or an individual, symbols of a collective or subjective diaspora, through images of daily life is my way of resisting erasure and historical silence. Art is a tool of resistance, a cry for freedom expressed in the textures of everyday life and human experience, from the ant to the anteater. Witness, interpreter, protagonist, historical memory, however one chooses to read it, visual art represents the mirror of a society and its individuals. To speak today of “diasporic” contemporary art means moving within a space of constant tension, where decades of political isolation, economic sanctions, and repression of freedom of expression have generated even greater strength, vitality, and determination. When an artist operates within a climate of ideological restriction, every creative gesture multiplies its force and its weight in space. Internal repression, forced exile from one’s homeland or from a chosen place of belonging, feeds a deep fracture, but also a new imagination.
The seven-month span of the Venice Biennale is, above all, a great opportunity for sharing, even before being a media showcase. As both artist and curator, the most significant contribution I have gained from the Venice Biennale, having been selected as an artist for the 2022 International Art Exhibition, for the Architecture Biennale in 2016, and as curator of the Iran Pavilion in 2017, the Almaty Museum in Kazakhstan in 2019, guest artists of the Cameroon Pavilion in 2022, and through the BIAS – International Biennial of Sacred Contemporary Art, is the artistic and personal growth that comes from sharing with artists from all over the world. Today, this journey brings me to the debut of sixteen artists in a compelling Biennale cultural event. For me, Rosa Mundi, curating another artist, regardless of the relationship I may have with them, is always a great responsibility, from the selection of the works to their installation, in dialogue with the space and with other artists, in an almost sacred dynamic. Each artist’s participation is embedded within a context of exchange among cultures, languages, and visions, where tradition is renewed through new expressive codes. The core of the selection is neither notoriety nor the economic appreciation of galleries, but rather being part of the same “flowering garden,” in which the term diaspora is transformed and enriched, becoming the emblem of an intimate connection between human beings, space, and nature: a feeling that does not divide but unites, does not break but binds, a kind of hortus conclusus.
Within this garden, the work of Joaquín Restrepo, with his human silhouettes suspended in an undefined time, offers a more intimate perspective. Here, critique is not frontal but more subtle; it emerges from the observation of everyday life, seeming to dissolve within it, yet without sparing the power dynamics underlying such changes. Migration, memory, and displacement are translated into fragile, emptied, contemplative figures and mental landscapes that reflect a condition shared by many artists who have grown up far from home. The Colombian diaspora, of which Joaquín is a key artistic voice, contributes significantly to the construction of a plural and incisive collective memory of his country—of its distant and layered origins that he carries with him wherever he goes. His works speak of loss and adaptation, of a city in constant evolution, and of individuals forced to redefine their relationship with the environment that surrounds them. The artistic proposals demonstrate how art, through its reflective language, can trigger processes of transformation in both individual and collective modes of thought among viewers, highlighting its potential as a critical and political act. A more overt political tension is evident in the work of Leone Solia, with his “skyscrapers” made of scratch cards, usingthe “calligraphy” of the 21st-century gold seeker who challenges fortune every day, ultimately enriching the state by financing legalized gambling. This becomes a contemporary ornamental motif through which he elegantly addresses state violence, mourning, and the personal trauma of poverty in constant pursuit of false illusions. The formal balance of his installation, composed of two doors from an ancient Venetian palace, does not soften its content; rather, it intensifies it, transforming traditional aesthetics into a tool of denunciation. It evokes the Gospel of Matthew passage “I am the door,” where the god of money replaces older and more established dogmas. Exodus becomes a non-space of a profound image which, in the rarefaction of human silhouettes, leaves the weight of its infinite essence. In a different way, Laura Mega and Gregory de la Haba, both of European origin, Laura Italian-American and Gregory Hispanic-American, having lived much of their lives in the United States, deconstruct the visual codes of official propaganda. On one side, they reveal its otherness; on the other, its self-referential and anti-historical attitude which, in shaping the “stone” of the world, exposes its coercive force. On the one hand, the emblematic image of Native Americans alongside the founding fathers of the United States’ independence from European monarchies; on the other, the Bald Eagle, the white-headed sea eagle, symbol of America. The bald eagle is a sacred symbol for Native peoples of both North and South America, present in Indigenous, Incan, and Aztec traditions rooted in shamanic beliefs.
Laura Mega’s eagle, reinterpreted through embroidery, her artistic gesture, becomes a powerful and universal symbol which, across centuries, from ancient Rome to the Prince of Epirus, from the Habsburg Empire to the Bourbons, and finally to the United States, has represented dominion, sovereignty, and strength, but also a spiritual dimension in the relationship between nature and cosmos. The eagle’s mirrored eyes, like built-in Ray-Ban lenses beneath its feathers, reinforce the symbol of America. The layering of Native American history, the symbolism of totems and feathered headdresses of Apache chiefs, is intertwined, through an act of monumental appropriation, with U.S. military history and global pop culture. Founded in 1937 by the American company Bausch & Lomb, the brand originated from a functional need: to protect Air Force pilots from sunlight glare. Mirrored sunglasses became a U.S. icon when General Douglas MacArthur was photographed wearing them during the landing in the Philippines in World War II, later transforming into a symbol of rebellious youth in 1952 with the Wayfarer model worn by James Dean. History repeats itself. Yet it was with the Aviator sunglasses in Top Gun, worn by Tom Cruise, that the union between the eagle of the sky and the mirror reached its apotheosis. America, with its airborne forces capable of landing anywhere, embodies the grandeur of its claimed divine authority. Its sharp vision reflects the constructed belief of knowing and controlling everything before descending upon the world, surpassing every human boundary and even the rules of nature and the international community. No one can see beyond the mirrored eyes of Laura Mega’s eagle. Its gaze and trajectory remain concealed, inscrutable to any observer. Within this work lies her story, her diaspora as an immigrant in America, with a one-way ticket that never truly allowed return: a grain among billions of silent, near-sighted injustices. Gregory de la Haba, through his “fake,” brings to the surface, ironically and masterfully, the self-referential attitude of history, anticipating by one year one of the most monumental symbols of America’s “Shrine of Democracy.” Next year marks the centenary of Mount Rushmore, created between 1927 and 1941 from over 450,000 tons of sculpted granite by four hundred workers to celebrate the founding fathers of the United States. This work stems from a personal provocation I posed to Gregory while discussing what he might present at the Venice Biennale, in relation to its theme. Known for his windsurf-shaped sculptures rising like a cosmic “Stonehenge” across sandy hills, he has recently returned to painting, creating fluorescent works that produce layered, illusory depths. The temptation was strong: to revisit the history of the Dakota tribe and bring forth, this time as “anti-fake”, the image of Chief Crazy Horse, who triumphed in the famous Battle of Little Bighorn against General Custer. A game, a provocation, a fake, or a historical falsehood? Not quite. In 1948, less than twenty-seven kilometers from the sacred Black Hills, Native Americans, what remained of them, challenged the star-spangled iconography by initiating the Crazy Horse Memorial, still under construction today. In a vision far from anti-historical, Gregory overlays the imagery of both monuments, illuminating the essence of the true fathers of that land, what Europeans call the “New World,” though for Indigenous peoples it has always been their land, never new at all. The Eurocentric and pro-American perspective dissolves into a molten historical vision of the future, aligned with the limits of human geographical experience. The United States had the opportunity to encounter the archaeology of its own land not through buried fragments, as in Magna Graecia or the Roman Empire, but directly—yet as it declared independence from European sovereignty, it enacted the self-determination of one conquering people over another that had been present for millennia. A story repeated endlessly across the globe, overturning paradigms believed to be eternal. Silvia Scaringella’s sculptures, marble dragonflies placed on the tabernacle of the ancient well of Titian, in the heart of Palazzo Donà dalle Rose, embody a powerful balance between void and matter, reflecting her vision of a society beyond Western stereotypes. A talented Roman sculptor, Silvia trained in Massa Carrara, where she chose to live, while her life also took a significant turn in Senegal. Transformation has always been central to her work. Her bees, widely recognized in the art world, are permanently exhibited at Rome’s Fiumicino Airport. The dragonfly, a potent symbol of transformation and change, represents in this phase of her artistic journey a form of inner maturity—the capacity to adapt and immerse oneself in a new culture, that of the Baye Fall, by choice and by love. Through this work, the artist interprets the diasporic journey of humanity in motion, far from both the allure of exoticism and the rhetoric of mere dissent, while maintaining a profound tool for processing the present in all its dimensions. Silvia has embraced not so much a religion as a way of life, following the principles of this Islamic brotherhood devoted to Cheikh Ibrahima Fall, within the mystical branch of Senegalese Muridism. It is characterized by an inner spiritual quest through work and sharing, rejecting individualism and bearing notable affinities with Franciscan principles. Her works, from drawings to sculptures, are deeply rooted in her original culture yet avoid any form of identity closure, addressing instead a global audience.
The works of the Sicilian artist Genny Petrotta are a living testament to a culture that continues to evolve without losing its original core, because being part of the Arbëreshë diaspora means inhabiting a dual belonging: preserving the past while transforming it, evolving through memory. Her art, through video installations and performances, becomes a space in which tension is translated into a shared, communicable language. In her installation, history expands with every step, in every gesture: the breath of the wind, the scent of laundry, the horizon of memory, the smile of remembrance, the voices of grandparents, a mother’s lullaby, a bedtime story. Her vision merges with the voiceof history through the “Ages” of a diasporic community. The Arbëreshë community itself is not spared by geopolitical visions that erase former borders and replace them with new ones, creating fresh cultural barriers and narratives that betray history. Thus, an ancient people, the people of the Prince of Epirus, Gjergj Kastrioti Skanderbeg, preserve their memory through language and traditions, both dispersed and unified in the lives of their people. Meanwhile, the greater Epirus, through historiographical distortions and shifting postwar borders, is forgotten and replaced by the name of a nation, Albania, which once represented only a part but has come to stand for the whole, reducing its historical breadth and significance. The tales and songs of a people, like priceless family jewels, are passed down with the exquisite sound of their land and language, one that, despite everything, resists the weight of historiography. The Albanian exodus dates back to the 15th century, following the Ottoman invasion of the Balkans after the death of Skanderbeg in 1468. Scattered across Europe, these communities preserved their language (Arbëresh), Byzantine rite, and traditions, forming a historically recognized ethno-linguistic minority that has given rise to numerous distinguished figures in the international cultural landscape. Identity emerges from processes of selection and omission within history and perpetuates itself by reproducing and reformulating its own narrative, much like collective memory, in constant dialogue with reality. The deep relationship between memory and identity reveals that identity is not a fixed essence, but rather a continuous process of redefinition and reconstruction, offering meaning to the present. There are no “pure” facts of memory, just as there are no memories free from social conditioning. Every memory is social, inevitably shaped by culture. For a community, reconstruction therefore means imagining a past between a lost age and the nostalgia for what is absent, between what never was and the desire for what might have been. Genny’s work is a journey back toward hidden sources, toward the age of origins, in an attempt to return to the maternal womb. Within these narratives, spatial and temporal coordinates emerge that transform the seemingly chaotic course of events into the destiny of a community.
In Aboriginal culture, there exists a temporal dimension suspended between the present and the “Alcheringa,” or Dreamtime, the mythical era of creation during which the story of th, world unfolded. George Nuku integrates this native cultural dimension, narrating the mythical genesis of the earth and of human civilization. Aboriginal cultural heritage has long attracted little interest from Western societies, which for centuries dismissed its mythology as mere children’s tales, devoid of artistic or historical value. Today, Aboriginal people represent only about 3 percent of Australia’s population, having been drastically reduced, by as much as 90 percent, through the actions of Western colonization, victims of prejudice that labeled them violent and uncivilized. They were confined to reserves or pushed to the margins of cities, subjected to systematic decimation and legalized segregation. Only in 1992 was the doctrine of terra nullius, the colonial principle that denied their land rights, abolished. Australian Aboriginal culture is considered the oldest living culture in the world, with a presence dating back approximately 50,000–60,000 years. In this context, the concept of “boundary” takes on unique and complex meanings, distinct from Western notions of ownership and territorial division. Boundaries are fluid, spiritual, and based on relationships with the environment, rather than rigid separations or claims of possession. George expresses his deep connection to the land as an extension of the self, not as property, encompassing physical, spiritual, and ancestral dimensions. The home becomes part of the land; the temple resides in the strength of one’s spirit and in the capacity to relate to the whole, matter and time alike. The pathways of the soul connect physical places through stories and songs, defining cultural boundaries rather than fixed geographic borders. The reference to the palace of the Prince, the Doge of Venice, Leonardo Donà dalle Rose, evokes a place shaped by a thinker who supported the arts, diplomacy, commerce, philosophy, and science during his rule, offering Galileo Galilei, a founding figure of modern Western astronomy, a safe haven and the means to pursue his vision of the solar system. For George, the exhibition space becomes a source of inspiration, entering into dialogue with its history, humanity, and the spirit that once inhabited it, illuminating a mythological and sacred dimension that he preserves within the heart of his temple. In Aboriginal culture, the sacred dimension of nature nourishes a spiritual center located outside the individual, uniting each person into a greater collective spirit.
Simone Lingua’s kinetic art fragments the space and time of perception into small, long, slender cells, redefining the void. Mirrors come alive with curves, reflecting one another, while sharp diagonals cut across the horizon. Lingua decomposes the universe in a regular, geometric way, dividing its interior into increasingly smaller cubes, an articulation that transcends the limits of the Cartesian system and extends beyond the transparent blades of plexiglass. Their perpendicular intersections evoke the rarefied identity of a people in motion, detached from the territory in which they were born or temporarily dwell, suspended between one place and another. Exodus preserves and sanctifies essence—an intangible heritage visible to few and invisible to many, like Lingua’s kinetic sphere, suspended in history, red as the blood flowing through the veins of a people forced to abandon their home. Lingua’s sphere becomes a space of memory, penetrated by light that spreads life and hope. This exhibition seeks to become a grand musical score in which art is a way of inhabiting, living, understanding, and integrating. The harmony of forms is composed through the beauty of dissonant differences. Art is a therapeutic tool, capable of improving life. Within the consciousness of diaspora resides a dominant awareness, a defining tension.
Curated by Rosa Mundi (Chiara Modìca Donà dalle Rose)