The eighteenth Giornata del Contemporaneo – Mille Nanni

Saturday 8 October 2022 will mark the eighteenth Giornata del Contemporaneo (Contemporary Art Day), an event promoted by AMACI – Associazione dei Musei d’Arte Contemporanea Italiani (the Association of Italian Contemporary Art Museums), which, over the last eighteen years, has been inviting museums, foundations, public and private institutions, galleries, studios, and artists’ spaces to show just how vibrant contemporary art in Italy is.

This year too, Fondazione Morra will be granting free entry to the permanent collection at Casa Morra. Archivi d’Arte Contemporanea, which is also hosting “Mille Nanni”, a temporary exhibition curated by Giuseppe Morra, dedicated to artist and friend of the Fondazione, Nanni Balestrini (1935- 2019).

“Mille Nanni” opened on 1 July 2022 to inaugurate a series of meetings dedicated to Balestrini. It presents his artistic journey, exploring the complexity of his thought through archive material, collages, and sculptures from the nineties, in addition to his prose, and poems.

Nanni Balestrini’s work shows a powerful creative and political commitment, manifest through tireless experimental research spanning different expressive languages. A keen observer and protagonist of today’s world, Balestrini invites us to look at reality not as a monolith but to take it in through a thousand glances, a thousand visions, multiplying and distorting it, challenging it. The artist’s universe is composed of constellations of poetic words, denuded and sometimes violent, searching for authenticity in a world of neo-capitalist inauthenticity.

Complementing the permanent exhibition dedicated to him, “Mille Nanni” is a diffuse exhibition throughout the building, showcasing the multidisciplinary character of the artist’s work, with a focus on his poetic sensibility.

faster and faster/ breathing in through the nose/ always the same beat/ being reduced/ still here saying doing/ to reach/ now not breathing/ safe and sound and no longer knowing/ who we are nor (Nanni Balestrini, Caosmogonia, 2010).