2015 was the year of the so-called European Migration crisis. Hundred of thousands people were fleeing the war in Syria and threatening life conditions in other parts of the world. We asked ourselves: shall we still invite guest artists from the Southern Mediterranean or are these artists already on their way? We were calling several refugee camps in Southern Italy and learned: Syrian people mostly took the „Balkan route“, African refugees hardly declared themselves as artists when the Italian authorities asked their profession. Only then we started to look at the African reality in Italy. Ten per cent of the 400.000 foreigners living in Tuscany as residents (some for generations) did arrive from African countries (mainly Morocco, Senegal and Nigeria). Their many many associations are invisible in the hegemonial Italian public. 2016 was the first year of Black History Month Florence, initiated by Justin Randolph Thompson and Andre Halyard and giving visibility and hearing to African rooted presences in Florence, from an Eritrean Restaurant to sociologists at the NYU (NewYork University). The same year the NYU organized a huge conference in Florence: Black Portraiture[s]: Imaging the Black Body and Re-staging Histories. Since then several activists, artists and few institutions created networks across Italy to confront racism, work on the colonial legacy and celebrate Afro-descendent Cultures in the context of Italy. Nevertheless this summer Palazzo Strozzi in Florence hosted an exhibition on AMERICAN ART 1961 – 2001 from the Walker Art Center Michigan (where George Floyd was killed a year before) where after the first canonical rooms dedicated to Minimalism, Pop Art etc. a little passage space was dedicated to „Other Voices“ = black and indigenous artists in the US! Next year the new Museo Italo-Africano should open in Rome as the core of the Museo della Civiltà, based on the collections of the Museo Coloniale di Roma (founded in 1923). Where are we now – concerning a public discussion on Italy’s past, the acknowledgment of diversity, the need to re-frame or better de-frame cultural production ?
Dear Angelika
I am drafting this letter to initiate a correspondence that reflects back upon the years of collaboration, dialogue and growth that we have shared over the past ten plus years. The impact of these collaborations on my personal career and on the development of Black History Month Florence, The Recovery Plan and of the broader communities that I am a part of cannot be understated. The divergence from what tend to be elitist structures and visions of art programming that ignore the power and potential of the archive and evacuate the capacity of art to shape social change are some of the distinctions and forms that have come to be represented within and through the institution of Villa Romana thanks to you. These are the elements that have made the audience for Villa Romana and the incredible network of international collaborations generative of a pulse in the city, unwilling to bend towards what are typical strategies of art curating and coordinating which embrace hierarchical distinctions that care little for artist’s agency and for the content building which is a necessary component of any art based practice. These aspects, which have tended to characterize the Florentine art scene are precisely what drove me away from engaging in it for the first half of my career. Villa Romana and my dialogue with you are in large part responsible for rebuilding my faith in the construction of another possible reality situated within this cultural panorama so ripe with what is mostly an uncharted and underacknowledged history.
One of my first direct interactions with you was within the framework of Rotte Metropolitane into which my work was curated by Giacomo Bazzani who introduced me to you. This was the first exhibition that framed my work as that of an Italian artist and it represented a long overdue reception of my art in the context in which I had been living for ten years. This gesture and perception is in keeping with the ways in which the program and residents of VR increasingly problematize what it means to be considered German and what it means to be affiliated with another nationally prescribed identity while anchored in the local realities not only of Italy but also more explicitly of Florence. The openness to the performance based work, which I developed in dialogue with my installation, both as public programming and for the personal elaboration of artistic research, was incredible and really opened my mind to what the art world in Florence could look like and represent. The interest that you demonstrated in rethinking audience and connecting the exhibition, made up mainly of Tuscany-based artists, with the group of fellows that were in residence at the time was fantastic and quickly made VR a space of exploration, dialogue, exchange and community.
Having worked with many international residencies in Italy for nearly 20 years I have recognized the ways in which many of these institutions support the fellows while providing little or no access nor opportunity for exchange with the communities and institutions that are situated in the hosting cities. They often exist as islands that function as retreats for the artists and as walls for the local communities. This is the exact opposite of the environment that has been cared for and brought forth with vision and dedication through your work and leadership. Your efforts to support and welcome the communities in and around the villa and to nurture the art of local makers, researchers and curators are part and parcel with a socially driven mission that the villa now represents. The community that frequents the vast range of events, projects and exhibitions that are carried forth by Villa Romana is one of the most dynamic and diverse audiences within the realm of contemporary art in Florence. This is the result of a careful consideration and of a genuine care for research and programming that speaks to, and with, a range of practices that frame the art context and extend beyond it. We can list so many multi-tier projects that attest to this, from academic reflections on the canon in Unmapping the Renaissance to a meditation on geography, migration and movement in Seeds for Future Memories. You have recognized that one task of having an international group of artists that rotates out every year is to ensure that there is a solid community around them that has been built and fostered to welcome them when they arrive.
Following the Rotte Metropolitane project, it would be a few years before we would reignite the collaboration. Throughout this time I became more and more familiar with the programming and fellows that were in constant flux at VR. In 2014 I was honored to be a part of a two-person solo project with my lifelong friend and mentor Kevin Jerome Everson curated by, another age old colleague, Andrew Smaldone. The project A Job Ain’t Nothin’ but Work was a key grounds for the type of performance based experimentation that has gone on to characterize my work, featuring a string quartet giving lessons to four string students, a DJ providing lessons on how to set up the turntables and a florist teaching floral composition, this project also featured the first iteration of a temporary monument within my practice. The opening and subsequent tours that took place around the project were energizing and to this date represent the only solo project I have ever realized in the city of Florence outside of university galleries. The review, which came out in Arte e Critica, is, to date, the only review ever written about my work being exhibited in Florence. The level of administrative and economic support along with the push to go beyond the exhibition itself have all gone on to form parts of the template for my work today. The dialogue initiated in the coming year with fellows at VR including Anike Joyce Sadiq were key to finding strategies of institutional support for projects that happen beyond the institutional walls.
I am drawn here to think about your efforts to place such a high importance on the archive and narration of the Villa Romana itself. This self-reflective approach to the institution is crucial in placing a sense of positionality into every project. Setting in place the digitizing of archives, you have developed a focus on mining those documents to speak to what the villa has represented in the past as a way of thinking about its role in the future. This focus on archival practices has been enriched by archive-based practices of the many artists invited to collaborate and the development of support and communities with which to converse around these pressing issues. These practices, to my mind, are absolutely unique in the Italian context extending a stance beyond the surface and glare of art to the practice of considering the infrastructure that advances art and the oft-unacknowledged research and labor of artists themselves. This methodology has spilled over into my own perception of the value that is placed on local and personal archives along with a care for the consideration of the aesthetics that frame and share these archives, and the research connected to them, with a broader audience. All of these aspects were formative to what the next few years held for my own engagement in the cultural landscape of the city of Florence and beyond.
With the initiation of Black History Month Florence we were able to quickly solidify strategies for mutual support with a VR fellow, Anike Joyce Sadiq featured in the inaugural exhibition, The Future Looks Brighter than Ever, at Galleria Biagiotti and the hosting of some of those invited as protagonists. The counsel and reception that has marked and defined our working process has been so critical to everything that has emerged from the six editions and over three hundred events that have been advanced since the platform’s inception. Villa Romana has played a crucial role in every step of its development. Throughout this period continuing to be one of the only institutions to support my artistic and academic practices alike inviting me as an artist to be a part of complex networks like Seeds for Future Memories and Florenz Contemporary at the Italian Embassy in Berlin while supporting the growth of Black History Month Florence and a range of programming initiatives that extend far beyond it. The integration of this work into the broader vision and initiative of the VR has been an incredible lesson on what it means to employ an institution in the shaping of a city and demonstrative of the incremental impact that support for artists and their research can have.
Much of the consideration that you and VR have given to the archive along with projects dedicated to friend and colleague Alessandra Ferrini, ongoing support for Fide Dayo, DAT Workshop and the African Diaspora Film Festival and the project that revolved around the archive of Andy Ndukuba and Sahara Desert, were all key to enhancing the vision and practice that became Black Archive Alliance and eventually The Recovery Plan. With the first BHMF curated project outside of the month of February taking place at Villa Romana in July of 2018 featuring the artists Delio Jasse, Jebila Okongwu and Anna Raimondo. Schengen opened the doors to the capacity of our curatorial collective to impact the institutional frames in which it operates. This project marked a shift in direction and fostered the interest in pushing beyond the self-prescribed limitations of the initiative of Black History Month Florence as work to be carried out exclusively in February. With it, the seeds were planted for Black Archive Alliance which was embraced and advanced by you and VR within the framework of Cantiere Toscana. Black Archive Alliance was proposed by BHMF based on a blank canvas which was offered to us. This freedom coupled with strategic support towards contacting a range of scholars and archives along with the crafting of new ways for engaging the public anchored our practice and this research platform, which was our very first. The form, flexibility, depth and reach of this platform is fruit of our collaboration and set the bar for all that was to follow. The seven platforms developed subsequently have their roots in this collaboration and include Fischi per Fiaschi, yet another platform which came to life trough a collaboration with your team, inspired by the vision of VR in establishing Scuola Populare. The form and language of this platform are outgrowths of the possibilities offered by the framing context of the villa and will continue to be forever shaped by these origins.
With Rajkaal Kahlon’s participation in our first pop up version of The Recovery Plan, Amelia Umuhire’s participation in the exhibition Sporcarsi le Mani per fare un Lavoro Pulito at Murate Art District, the solo project for Lerato Shadi developed in collaboration with VR and the numerous hostings, collaborations and exchanges which are truly too many to list here, our alignment and our pushing of each other has left a permanent mark on the institution that has grown into The Recovery Plan. This letter is perhaps a way to trace back through all of the behind the scenes which will be preserved as a part of the archive and to remember and highlight your role and timeless support at every step of the way. It is my hope that the feeling is mutual and that we in turn were able to support your vision and push your practice. Despite what may be the end of a long and beautiful stretch of work at the Villa Romana for you, you can rest assured that the seeds which were planted in the meantime will be nurtured, rotated and fed far into the future and that our collaboration has no institutional boundaries or borders.
With sincere Gratitude
Justin Randolph Thompson_ Director Black History Month Florence/The Recovery Plan