"Obra Aberta" - The first great exhibition on Luigi Ghirri in Portugal
The 16th edition of the Festa do Cinema Italiano opened in Lisbon on March 28 – the main event in Portugal dedicated to Italian culture and one of the most popular film festivals in the country.
The Festival presents a rich and diversified programme, with films by well-known and new directors, classics of Italian cinematography, previews, fiction, documentaries, and many side events open to different forms of art, including photography.
This year, in collaboration with the Centro Cultural de Belém, one of the main cultural institutions of the country, the festival has organized the first major photographic exhibition in Portugal dedicated to Luigi Ghirri, one of the most emblematic figures in the history of 20th century photography.
Luigi Ghirri, Obra Aberta was inaugurated on March 28 at the Centro Cultural de Belém and will run until June 6.
Curated by Pedro Alfacinha, the exhibition displays seventy-nine photographs produced by the artist from Reggio Emilia in the 1980s. As we read in the presentation, this unprecedented selection of works was guided by Ghirri's ideas expressed in his writing L’opera aperta (1984), as well as by the very structure of his collection, respecting tendencies and evident predilections.
Despite coming from independent groups of works, from different moments over a decade, almost all of these images appear under the design of Paesaggio Italiano — which, much more than a closed series, was a manifesto and metaphor for the entirety of Ghirri’s work: an open work, a new way of doing photography and looking at the world «in a continuous dialogue between everything that has already happened and everything that is to come».
In addition to the exhibition, the screening of the documentary Infinito. L'universo di Luigi Ghirri", which traces the crucial stages of the photographer’s life and work.
Written and directed in 2022 by Matteo Parisini starting from the collaboration of the Ghirri Archive and with the testimonies by some figures close to the photographer, it was made with the support of the Municipality of Modena, the Emilia-Romagna Region through Emilia-Romagna Film Commission, and with the contribution, among others, of Sky Arte and Rai Cultura.
It is a journey in the Emilian province and landscape – “a place par excellence, where one can meet hate and love, everything and nothing, boredom and excitement", like Ghirri himself writes, as he has accompanied the creation of images with a constant reflection on looking at – sixty-nine texts in nineteen years –, reflection that the documentary conveys through actor Stefano Accorsi's voice-over.
The exhibition could also count on the presence of the author's daughter, Adele Ghirri, who together with curator Pedro Alfacinha participated in the presentation of the documentary and in a guided tour of the exhibition.
Moreover, in Lisbon, for what is promised to be the photographic exhibition of the year in Portugal, that has already registered a great interest from the public and the press, meetings and debates will be organized with the participation of important Portuguese and Italian figures linked to the world of photography and architecture.
The Festa do Cinema Italiano is organized by Associazione Il Sorpasso and has the support of the Embassy of Italy and the Italian Cultural Institute in Lisbon, Istituto Luce-Cinecittà, MiC Direzione Cinema, as well as the local public institutions and private partners.
The exhibition Luigi Ghirri, Obra Aberta has the patronage of Emilia-Romagna Region.