The Art as Identity exhibition compares the works of the artists Adelita Husni-Bey, Elena Mazzi and Shefa Salem, linked to the vision of art as a vehicle of identity and expression of a process of reflection on the reactivation of the Genius Loci through artistic language. An extremely current theme in the era of globalization, where the criteria for defining identity, both collective and individual, are subjected to continuous changes and transformations; issues that make it indispensable today for a redefinition of criteria linked to the reaffirmation of the person with respect for diversity, which at this moment still need to be clearly focused. The invitation extended to me by the Consulate General in Benghazi, the city where the first exhibition of the exhibition will be held, and by the Italian Embassy in Tripoli, where the exhibition will be held at the beginning of 2024, led me to imagine a dialogue between different points of view on a territory like Libya, through the eyes of an artist who lives and works in Benghazi like Salem, compared with the work of Husni-Bey, an Italian-Libyan, and with the research of the Italian Elena Mazzi, attentive to the analysis of the relationships between the human being and his socio-anthropological context.
The three artists were asked the question How does art define your identity?, in order to broaden the field of investigation to questions linked to the particular geographical context that hosts the exhibition. The Genius Loci analyzed not only as landscape and territory in a physical sense, but above all from a conceptual and symbolic point of view. The works presented in the exhibition by Husni-Bey, Mazzi and Salem indicate specific points of view, of historical, social and anthropological inspiration, linked to themes such as landscape, archaeology, history and travel, conceived as a possibility of rereading of one's identity, not only in a political but above all psychological or cultural sense. As the African-American writer James Baldwin reminds us, identity can be compared to the cloak of nomadic desert peoples, shaped by the shape and conditions of the body it envelops. This is what happens during the curatorship of the exhibition, where the works build a mix of images and suggestions capable of arousing in the visitor a series of reflections on the relationship between past and present, image and symbol, local and global, which in a country like Libya take on complex and unexpected aspects and meanings. Each of them has chosen a theme, a punctum - to quote Roland Barthes - protagonist of works capable of proposing a narrative that is not chronological but diachronic, which takes on different forms and media. Conceived as a dialogue between different practices, methodologies and languages, the exhibition brings together fifteen works and is accompanied by a catalog with the text by the curator Ludovico Pratesi, interviews with the artists and reproductions of the works on display.