This book deals with objects of migration on the central Mediterranean route. Traces of this phenomenon include objects left more or less voluntarily by migrant people along their journey, particularly upon arrival on the shores of Lampedusa and Sicily. Since 2013, hundreds of these objects have been retrieved by Massimo Ricciardo with his colleague Thomas Kilpper, and are now part of the “Objects of Escape – Inventories of Migration’’ archive. These objects are functional to the journey, such as biscuit tins and water bottles, passports and nautical charts, but they also relate to identity and memory, such as family photographs, diaries, or a handful of earth from their homeland. In the installation “Objects of Migration, Photo-Objects of Art History: Encounters in an Archive,” Ricciardo creates a dialogue between selected objects from this archive and structures from the KHI Photothek on the other. The installation, which led to this book, raises a series of highly relevant questions about these ‘talking’ objects: who do they belong to? Are they part of the cultural heritage? What would be the appropriate artistic and curatorial approach if one decided to collect, archive, exhibit, transform them?
A cura di / Edited by Costanza Caraffa, Almut Goldhahn.
Realizzato grazie al sostegno della / Supported by the Direzione Generale Creatività Contemporanea del Ministero della Cultura nell’ambito del programma Italian Council.
Promosso e curato da / promoted and edited by Kunsthistorisches Institut Florenz, Max-Plank-Institut.
208 p, ills colour & bw, 16 x 24 cm, pb, Italian/English
