Roots.Memory, Identity and Change in the art of today

Marina Abramović, Jota Castro, Sam Durant, Regina Josè Galindo, Carlos Garaicoa, Alfredo Jaar, Mariangela Levita, Moataz Nasr, Giulia Piscitelli, Bert Rodriguez, Santiago Serra. 

June – September 2012
Menegaz Foundation, Palazzo de Sanctis, Teramo, Italy

It is odd how the tree has dominated Western reality and all of Western thought, from botany to biology and anatomy, but also gnosiology, theology, ontology, all of philosophy…: the root-foundation, Grund, racine, fondement. The West has a special relation to the forest, and deforestation….
G. Deleuze – F. Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus  

Since ancient times the word “roots” has been endowed with a vast symbology that embraces different branches of learning. By extension, has used as a metaphor able to draft the origin of everything.

Roots are a primary all-encompassing symbol, the fruit of an analogy drawn between man and earth that “aligns” human life with nature. On the other hand, the tree- the plant, the roots- have been man’s most various allegorical figures, from Homer to Virgil, from Dante to Shakespeare, from Goethe to Heidegger.

There is no doubt that we live in the era of the so-called “globalisation”, of the increasing, and unstoppable, interconnection of people and places, a consequence of the advancement of information technologies, communication and transport. Multiculturalism and globalisation are indeed some of the most often discussed, debated and abused terms. The former is generally presented as the potential solution to the problems raised by the latter, in a singular reversal of the issue concerning the cohabitation of different people. It is also invoked as an antidote against the upsurge of old n new particularisms, which lead to a new wave of intolerance, experienced at every level of the society.

Starting from these premises, Roots is a group exhibition that questions a number of social, cultural, and political issues. It explores the sense of the history underlying the evolution of the value system, the attachment or uprooting from the territory, the erosion of inheritance. It presents work from Marina Abramović, Jota Castro, Sam Durant, Regina Josè Galindo, Carlos Garaicoa, Alfredo Jaar, Mariangela Levita, Moataz Nasr, Giulia Piscitelli, Bert Rodriguez and Santiago Sierra. Different artists for sensitivity and research, aiming to juxtapose a visual and cultural experience, suspended between past and present, which invokes a sense of memory, identity and change.