Microcosmo Palazzo Strozzi, the second issue by academies students’

Florence, July 17th, 2024

Palazzo Strozzi magazine returns in collaboration with the students of the academies. Microcosmo Palazzo Strozzi 2024 illustrates the work done by the cultural institution in the last year, and returns through the contributions of young artists, graphic designers and photographers, a plurality of views on the exhibitions of Palazzo Strozzi and their potential in education.

Inside the publication, designed with the support of the students of the Master Degree Course in Graphic Design and the coordinator Walter Conti, we find two containers, Plurals - PCTO path of the Palazzo Strozzi Foundation and Memory Containers - project dedicated to students of the main art academies of Tuscany, exploit the exhibitions to trigger collective learning processes, participatory dynamics and research paths.

Memory Containers is an educational experiment that allowed young artists, curators and graphic designers to confront the works of Anselm Kiefer and to deepen the value of history and memory through their artistic research. The activity involved about 80 students from 7 national and international art academies based in Tuscany (Accademia di Belle Arti di Carrara, Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze, Accademia Italiana, California State University, Fondazione Studio Marangoni, Istituto Marangoni Firenze, Laba - Libera Accademia di Belle Arti Firenze), has developed over a period of 4 months, and allowed to reflect on the value of history and individual and collective memory.

Within the Memory Containers section, also the projects of two students of the first year of the Master in Photography, supervised by professor Dario Orlandi.

The works of Maria Christidi and Marco Chiesa testify to two complementary approaches, in terms of content and method, to the theme of photography as a tool for exploring memory and interpreting history. Christidi’s work recovers and actualizes archetypes of the Hellenic tradition in a personal and lyrical reinterpretation of the great themes of the classical imagination, relating them to important current issues. Chiesa’s work is strongly rooted in contemporaneity, in history in its making from below, and is presented as a choral performative path, of which the photographer is a skilled director. Christidi’s language is intense and dramatic, direct and analytical that of the Church. Two very different paths, therefore, for origins, methods and languages; but still consistent and convergent in the common intent to help delineate that delicate plot that binds small and large stories with history.

Thursday, July 18 at 18.00 will be presented Microcosmo Palazzo Strozzi, the second issue of the magazine that collects the projects Plurals and Memory Containers made by the Palazzo Strozzi Foundation on the occasion of the exhibitions Anish Kapoor. Untrue Unreal (7 October 2023 - 4 February 2024) and Anselm Kiefer. Fallen Angels (22 March - 21 July 2024)

The presentation of the publication will take place in the conference room in Strozzina. Free admission subject to availability.