As you want me is the collective exhibition curated by the class of ICON 2022 (Course for Curators of the Contemporary Image) of the FMAV Higher Education School.

As you want me borrows, and pays homage to, the title of the play written by Luigi Pirandello in 1929, to investigate the meaning of the relationships that come into play in an image between the represented subject and the author who represents him. The protagonist of Pirandello's drama is "The Unknown", a young woman we know only through the stereotyped vision of the characters who cross her path who identify her on the basis of the social construction they would like her to be. Her true identity and subjectivity, as well as her name, remain elusive and ambiguous throughout the work. As in drama, the exhibition proposes a reflection on the original ambivalence of the sense of identity, which is always formed within a relational process, and of its representation in the form of an image.

The exhibition itinerary develops these themes in two large sections through photographic works , videos and drawings by various national and international artists selected for the occasion from the FMAV collections.

The first room presents works that question the value of representation as an authentic proof of the subjectivities they depict, revealing the construction of the process of image- making itself , through the use of various expedients: disguises, doublings, manipulations, estrangements, unveiling of multiple points of view or annulling authorial subjectivity. The artists selected for the second part of the exhibition, on the other hand, reappropriate their image and represent themselves as they intend to be recognized, forcefully declaring a fluid identity, neither taken for granted nor pre-established by socio-cultural instances.

More information on the event can be found here.