Unannounced: The Other Voices of Silence

Artland Milano and Mattia Pozzoni Art Advisory present "Unannounced: The Other Voices of Silence", curated by Marta Orsola Sironi and held at LAMPO from Thursday, September 21st to Sunday, October 8th. The exhibition brings together sixteen emerging artists based in the United Kingdom and Italy: Alessio Barchitta, Giuditta Branconi, James Cabaniuk, Nicole Colombo, Kat Giordano, Filippo Gualazzi, Hannah Lim, Aronne Pleuteri, Zayn Qahtani, Gianna Rubini, Adelisa Selimbasic, Ebun Sodipo, Maddalena Tesser, Katie Tomlinson, Georgia-May Travers Cook, and Sidney Westenskow.

"Unannounced, The Other Voices of Silence" proposes a reflection on the voice as both a physical element and a medium of meaning with performative power. On the one hand, the voice is embodied, situated in our context, and shaped by our experience. On the other, is what connects us to each other as social beings. It is the vehicle of our possibility to express ourselves and communicate and thus is the metaphor for our unique participation in sociopolitical life.

The presence or absence of our voices connects us with or excludes us from a particular community. The exhibition precisely investigates this absence and what happens to those subjects excluded from sociopolitical life. They are the ones labelled as "the others," who don't belong to the heteronormative-white-Eurocentric paradigm, such as women, the lgbtqia+ community, colonised populations, or racially discriminated individuals. Centuries of prevarication and abuse have silenced them, and their voices remain too often unheard.

In recent decades, however, the social claims by marginalised subjects have become increasingly louder in rebelling against this enforced silence and proposing new alternatives to the dominant system. Thoughts and texts such as those of Anne Anlin Cheng, Rosi Braidotti, bell hooks, or Paul B. Preciado, just to name a few, nowadays outline how listening to and recognising these other forms of subjectivity could enable us to look at the history of the construction of the "modern personhood" from an external perspective. A perspective from which we can grasp its shadows and dangers and from which we can move resistance.
The other voices of silence are thus the voices of change, which come unannounced to wake us up from our torpor and show us that out of the status quo, another world is possible.

"Unannounced" is an exhibition that moves between the margins and asks us to listen to consciously grasp the dynamics of our existence together in silence. The project aims to build a bridge between different visions and approaches and between Italy and the United Kingdom. The invited artists analyse in their practice the themes of absence, silence, resistance and situatedness in our existing together as
human beings. Through different media,
they establish an equal dialogue between perspectives to actively rethink our presence in sociopolitical life.

LAMPO is a large container of events, which has a particular focus on sociocultural activities and education through the involvement of neighbourhood associations and realities of the IX Municipality as well as collaboration with prestigious cultural bodies and institutions, with the aim of representing an engine of urban regeneration, realising a place of innovation, development, creativity and inclusion by overcoming the degree zero of the previous complete abandonment.... read the rest of the article»