curated by Chiara Gatti, Elisabetta Masala

in collaboration with Storyville

with texts in the catalogue by Felice Cimatti and Fabio Merlini

The MAN of Nuoro announces a major exhibition for the summer that will transform all the rooms of the museum into a dynamic and sensitive space, made up of narratives and visions, memories of the earth and new horizons. The MAN, how a gigantic diorama – boxed illusion of a realistic world, device used above all in natural history museums to illustrate the environments of the biosphere – will return to offer the public an experience of “crossing” the museum, already tested in 2022 with the exhibition SENSORAMA , questioning ourselves once again on current issues. Derived from Greek say ( through) e òrama ( vision), DIORAMA means “to see through” or “into something.” In this case, through cross-sections of natural and unnatural worlds, populated with real or recreated creatures and vegetation, in a perspective that makes the limit between authentic or generated by artificial intelligence, possible or impossible, increasingly ambiguous.

In a period marked by unprecedented ecological and social changes, with impacts that extend across time and space, it is important to reconsider our relationship with the world and its rapid metamorphoses. We are faced with a global ecological transformation that requires a profound reflection on the condition of the human being, on the history of the earth, and our connection with other living creatures. Rethinking our relationship with the planet implies the research of new languages and new forms of communication, which are essential for renewing connections between the human and non-human world. DIORAMA – Generation Earth stems from the belief that we must take an active role in this reinvention process. The idea of being the first generation to tackle the realistic possibility of the extinction of the human species engenders a strong feeling of anxiety. Starting from this sense of disconcertment, DIORAMA explores the current scenario, without claiming to offer an exhaustive analytical investigation, putting forward possible visions that take into account these compelling issues.

Through an array of works including paintings and sculptures, installations and videos, selected Italian and international artists advance sweeping interpretations, from mimetic creativity to post-natural prospects, from interspecific hybridisation to taxidermy and wonder-rooms, from the invention of natural landscapes to unexplored visions of generative intelligence. Through the works on display, DIORAMA – Generation Earth wants to stir critical dialogue and reflection on our standpoint within the biosphere and prompt a renewed relationship with it. The artists therefore become catalysts of a radical change thanks to their ability to see beyond the visible and invite the audience to lay the foundations for a different imagery that may lead us toward an inclusive future that respects all forms of life.

Christiane Löhr (Wiesbaden, 1965) Kleine Gräserkuppel / Little Grass Dome, 2021 Grass stalks

Exhibition path

“The origin” is the prologue of the exhibition: the creation of planet Earth and the galaxy. Visitors will witness the spectacle of the genesis of that amalgam composed of matter and dark energy. Underpinning the exhibit are key words such as organic and inorganic, nature/art and its transformations: across the museum halls, female and male artists take possession of ‘nature’, enclosing it within their system/content that imitates it while conserving and reimagining it.

Like one greenhouse production, the natural world is recreated and imitated. Mimesis and representation animate the works of Barragão , Kusumoto , Roberti , Illenberger , Bauer . The natural world, fixed in a sculptural form or sealed in the circuit of the fabric, re-proposed by the sensitivity of man or by artificial intelligence, acquires an unusual dynamism and a new reality.

Vanessa Barragão (Albufeira, 1992)
Portrait of Vanessa Barragão: recycling in textile art as a global manifesto, 2019
Textile fibre, yarn, crochet and hand weaving
DHG, Prato

Hybridisations, interspeciesism, and eco-dystopia are the scenarios of a near future displayed in the section reserved to alien ecosystems, the upshots of post-naturalism, the encounters with an otherness that requires reconsidering an anthropocentric perspective. A tunnel of light evokes a laboratory for hybrid creatures (by Massoulier, Grünfeld, Chiamenti) and culminates with a large work by Wangechi Mutu representing a fluid Mother Earth towering over the universe in which alien and terrestrial creatures blend, without distinctions between male and female, human beings, animals and plants; a jubilee of the term ‘intertwined’: living beings that belong to a world that does not envisage divisions between races, genders, and species.

Artists: