Designed with studioamatoriale, the exhibition unfolds as an archipelago of conceptual “islands”—commons, mobility, and resistance—drawing from decolonial and pluriversal frameworks. Each section offers artworks as terrains of inquiry, tracing cartographies of memory, struggle, and ecological entanglement.
“The three thematic “islands” are conceived as interconnected, deconstructed pavilions. Each island is a porous organism in which the installation is not merely a vessel but an active agent of meaning: it acts as language, atmosphere, and political space.”
Towards a Pluriversal Politics. Curator’s Introduction,
Aria Spinelli and Angelo Castucci,
Exhibition Booklet.
Commons
“Common Geographies opens the exhibition by addressing landscape as a living archive of memory, rights, and relationships. Works such as Vilcabamba: de iura fluminis et terrae (2022), Memorias del hielo (2024), and Have a Wonderful Time (2021) explore legal, poetic, and symbolic dimensions, proposing landscape as both legal subject and site of memory. Here, the commons — or the processes of commoning — are not contextualised within the human world and its forms of social organisation; instead, they advance these concepts of gathering from more-than-human perspectives. Departing from a critical approach to the absurdities of extractive capitalism as in Have a Wonderful Time (2021), Geographies of the Commons advances alternative perceptions of the world by proposing the representation and personification of the waters of Vilcamba and the Glaciers of Chimborazo in Ecuador as in Vilcabamba: de iura fluminis et terrae (2022), and Memorias del hielo (2024). These waters and glaciers are not silent witnesses to ecological crises; water bodies become vital actors in the struggle for preservation. To tell this story, A4C asks the audience to listen carefully to how we perceive these waters through sound, moving images, and sonifications.”
Towards a Pluriversal Politics. Curator’s Introduction,
Aria Spinelli and Angelo Castucci,
Exhibition Booklet.
Mobility
“Mobile Geographies unfolds through Camera con Vista (2017), where mobility becomes both a perceptual and political condition. The representation of mobility concerns our second island, where colours and moving images combine to address forced mobility within the urban context of Rome. Communities of migrants and Roma are often victims of forced displacement, yet many set up homes as best they can, arranging furniture and putting up wallpaper. The contradiction of the excluded being forced into displacement while also establishing their own lives within that enclosure is evident in A4C’s representation of mobility. The island prompts us to question how we perceive mobility and the contradictions within it. In our current policrisis, mobility is part of the everyday experience of the world. When forced mobility is enacted, the lines between inclusion and exclusion are blurred.”
Towards a Pluriversal Politics. Curator’s Introduction,
Aria Spinelli and Angelo Castucci,
Exhibition Booklet.
Resistance
“Resistant Geographies assembles practices of resistance to environmental destruction, colonial violence, and extractivist policy. Lacus Legalis Naturae (2021), Quito Sin Minería (2021), La invención del blanco (2021), and Aktivismus (2021-2024) form a landscape of both denunciation and symbolic and legal reappropriation. In the last island, the human world is presented through reflections in forms of resistance, notions of whiteness, and enactments of struggles through performative law-making. Here, the colours, chants, calls to action, and enactments of legal representation come together in one setting, showing and inviting reflection on how alternatives are created and proposed, and how resistance and forms of struggle are potent tools for alternative political imaginings.”
Towards a Pluriversal Politics. Curator’s Introduction,
Aria Spinelli and Angelo Castucci,
Exhibition Booklet.