War is over! Peace has not yet begun

From Wednesday, April 5 to Sunday, September 17, 2023, Fondazione Imago Mundi presents the exhibition War is over! Peace has not yet begun at Gallerie delle Prigioni in #treviso.

The exhibition features works by 15 artists: Francesco Arena, Terry Atkinson, Massimo Bartolini,

Eteri Chkadua, Maxim Dondyuk, Harun Farocki, Leon Golub, Alfredo Jaar, JR, Mario Merz, Richard Mosse, Pedro Reyes, Martha Rosler, Sim Chi Yin, and Ran Slavin. War is over! Peace has not yet begun, through the selection of artists' works, invites us to look at the apparently concluded conflicts of our time and of the past, and to reflect on the profound difference between the mere closing or deadlock of the armed phase of a conflict and the establishment of a true condition of peace.

When a war ends, a long period of time begins which is usually far from media attention and which does not always result in a real and lasting peace. In recent times we have seen this happen, for example, in Iraq and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where tensions are now being rekindled after decades. From the moment the United States decided to “end the war,” has the violence in Afghanistan ceased?

Wars therefore end, but when does peace begin? #fondazioneimagomundi proposes that visitors to the #treviso exhibition seek possible answers through an experiential exhibition itinerary that creates a short-circuit between three different ways of interpreting this very difficult theme: a journey through art history is interwoven with works that express themselves in the most contemporary artistic languages and with photographic shots of an explicit documentary nature.  In all the works selected by #fondazioneimagomundi, the drama of a time of peace  that has begun, but has not really been accomplished, fully resonates.

In a series of installations, the exhibition presents  unpublished photographs by Maxim Dondyuk, a Ukrainian photographer who has followed the evolution of the situation in his country from 2014 to the present, and who takes us inside a war that is still ongoing. In parallel, Richard Mosse shows us part of the Infra project, a photographic work developed with Kodak Aerochrome color infrared film, on the forgotten conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In the works of Mario Merz, Alfredo Jaar, Terry Atkinson and Leon Golub, we encounter profound reflections on the premises, dynamics and consequences of war. Other works, such as those by Martha Rosler and Harun Farocki, investigate how the media have disseminated the images produced by wars. 

Two short video essays commissioned by the Foundation and curated by Francesco Spampinato and Fulvia Strano trace a path that reflects on the importance of images created by the computerisation of the battlefield in narrating war and shaping the representation of the enemy, and show, through great names in art history, how the narrative of conflicts has often been entrusted to carefully constructed images.

A rich programme of events and panel discussions with geopolitical experts, scholars, and representatives of civil society is planned to explore the themes covered by the exhibition.