Title & Author:

Dawit L. Petros : spazio disponibile / editors, Liz Park, Gaëtane Verna.

Edition:

First edition.

Publication:

Milan, Italy : Mousse Publishing ; Toronto : The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, 2022.
©2022

Description:

339 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 24 cm.

Notes:
Catalog of an itinerant exhibition first presented at the Power Plant contemporary art gallery, Toronto, Canada, January 25-July 28, 2020.
Published in conjunction with the exhibition "Spazio Disponible," presented at The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto, 25 January-28 July 2020, curated by Irene Campolmi and presented at the University of Buffalo Art Galleries, 24 September 2020--15 May 2021, curated by Liz Park.
Includes bibliographical references.
Foreword / Gaëtane Verna -- The past is a foreign country: the misplaced memory of Italian colonialism in Eritrea / Irene Campolmi -- Geometries and geographies: Dawit L. Petros's expansive modernist narratives / Elizabeth Harney -- Looking for available space: tracing Dawit L. Petros's journey from the Strangers notebook to Spazio disponible / Liz Park -- The immeasurable and disappeared / Sean Anderson -- Transnational pre[-] occupations in Dawit L. Petros's project about colonial and migratory spaces (Eritrea-Italy-Canada) / Teresa Fiore -- Overlapping and intertwined territories that fall from view / Tak Pham -- From Case d'Italia to Case dei Popoli: reflections on a fascist building / Fabrizio Gallanti.
Text in English and French.
Co-published by Mousse Publishing, and University of Buffalo Art Galleries.

Summary:

Dawit L. Petros's work reflects his research into the layers of colonial and post-colonial histories connecting East Africa and Europe. Reframing archival materials about the Italian presence in Ethiopia and Eritrea between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Petros has developed an expansive suite of works reflecting the lingering effects of colonial brutality and revealing the links between the contemporary resurgence of nationalism and a suppressed colonial past.
"This publication is a culmination of years of research by the Chicago- and Montreal-based artist Dawit L. Petros on the legacy of Italian colonialism in East Africa, in particular, his native Eritrea. It is also a documentation of his eponymous exhibition of photographs, serigraphs, video, sculpture, and soundscape at The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery in Toronto (January 17-Sep 7, 2020) and its tour to University at Buffalo Art Galleries (September 24, 2020-May 15, 2021). An underexplored area of scholarship, Italian colonialism in Africa has long evaded scrutiny as it was often subsumed under the country's fascist chapter. Informed by this colonial history and its lived legacy, Petros began his research seven years ago, and has taken many journeys across multiple continents including a 13-month-long road trip within Africa and across the Mediterranean into Europe. His archival exploration in Italy revealed among other records Revista Coloniale--an early twentieth century journal that documented Italian settlement in Africa. Within the pages of this magazine, vacant advertisement spots labeled "spazio disponibile" (available space) grabbed the artist's attention as a visual reprieve from and an interruption to the colonial narrative. Although reserved for commercial interests, these empty pockets of space offered Petros the symbolic possibility to insert stories otherwise untold and unheard. Petros has since continued to look for gaps in collective memory and to transform them into a platform for exploring complicated layers of modernism from a colonized subject position. In this sprit, his most recent work brings home extensive research to focus on Montreal's Casa d'Italia, a celebrated community centre for the city's Italian-Canadian community, and in the process, reveals the fascist symbols built into its architecture. What are the spaces available to colonial subjects such as the artist himself to insert multi-directional immigration histories? In today's renewed but frayed discussions of nation-states and their borders, how do we make space available to a new nexus of migrants who recognize that movement is a fundamental condition of humanity? In addition to directorial and curatorial voices from The Power Plant and UB Art Galleries that will contextualize the artist's exhibition, this publication will also include a collection of scholarly reflections on the colonial conditions and its present-day effects addressed in Petros's work."-- Provided by publisher.

Resources:
French equivalent / Équivalent français

ISBN:

9788867495207 (softcover)
8867495208 (softcover)

Subject:

Petros, Dawit L., 1972- Exhibitions.
Petros, Dawit L., 1972- Expositions.
Colonies in art Exhibitions.
Colonies dans l'art Expositions.
Colonies in art
Italian colonies
Africa In art Exhibitions.
Africa Colonization Exhibitions.
Italy Colonies Africa, East Exhibitions.
Italie Colonies Afrique orientale anglophone Expositions.
Afrique Dans l'art Expositions.
Africa, East

Form/genre:

exhibition catalogs.
Exhibition catalogs
Catalogues d'exposition.

Added entries:

Petros, Dawit L., 1972- Works. Selections.
Park, Liz, 1983- editor.
Verna, Gaëtane, editor.
Petros, Dawit L., 1972- artist.
Power Plant (Art gallery), host institution, publisher.
UB Art Galleries, host institution, publisher.
Dawit L. Petros.
Dawit L. Petros. French.

Spazio disponible

Holdings:

Location: Library main 318345
Call No.: 318345
Copy: 1
Status: Available