THE "HUMAN RIGHTS?” EXHIBITION
Why work? What makes it unique among human activities? The republic in which we live, for example, has considered it a founding value, an inviolable right and a status through which participation in the political, economic and social organization of the country is achieved. It could be considered a kind of doorway to citizenship. It must also be for this reason that the United Nations has included it in the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development. There are not many objectives indicated by the UN, seventeen to be precise: the eighth is work, but not just any job, a decent one.
This year the Campana dei Caduti Foundation has decided to dedicate the annual exhibition "Human Rights?" to this theme. This is the fifteenth edition and so far it has taken place twelve times at the Colle. The artistic director Roberto Ronca, who attended the inauguration last June 5 together with the Vice President of the Foundation Lorenzo Saiani and the president of the Apt (Trento Tourist Board) Giulio Prosser, has selected artists from all over the world, so as to be able to enjoy many different points of view, also directly linked to cultures far from ours. Until 5 October, 141 works from 29 countries can be admired. All information is available on the website and on the social networks of the Foundation and the International Association of Plastic Arts Italy (Aiapi) which is collaborating for the event.
It is nothing new that art reflects on this theme, nor that work can be scarce, extremely difficult, poorly paid or unsafe. Telemaco Signorini's nineteenth-century weavers probably did not return home after eight hours, and neither did Jean-François Millet's gleaners, with their backs bowed to symbolize the fatigue of life in the fields. And the two peasants in Vincent Van Gogh's “The Siesta” may also be sleeping in the bright yellow of the wheat, but what effort did they make before that? Artists have always wondered about the meaning and significance of work for they have represented it, idealized it, denounced it, illustrated it like historians, studied it like economists and analyzed it like philosophers. But we cannot stop doing it, because in every age things change and above all because each of us has the right to something more, to something that only beauty can give us: the possibility of understanding things not only with the mind but also with the gut. And sometimes we have to be ready to take a punch in the pit of the stomach.
Luna Miscuglio, «Riquadri»
Nicla Ferrari, «Work»
