The Milky Way

The Milky Way, promoted by Pianoterra and curated by Damiana Leoni, comes back on Thursday, May 24th (12am-9pm), Friday, May 25th (11am-7.30pm) and Saturday, May 26th (10-12am, by appointment only), press preview Wednesday, May 23rd 11am-3pm. After the previous three editions in 2014 in Naples, at Lia Rumma Gallery, in 2015 in Rome, at Studio SALES di Norberto Ruggeri Gallery and in 2016 at Giò Marconi Gallery, The Milky Way is back in Naples and offers the public a chance for a new gaze.

The Milky Way Foto will open at Lia Rumma Gallery, involving 57 artists and photographers in an exhibition whose theme will be Your Love / Amore Tuo, a way of telling love through multiple visions. The Milky Way Foto’s protagonists are: Marina Abramović, Miles Aldridge, Andreco, Ciro Battiloro, Priscilla Benedetti, Jasmine Bertusi, Tommaso Borgstrom, Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin, Francesco Cabras, Simona Caleo, Juno Calypso, Paolo Canevari, Monica Carocci, Lorenzo Castore, Talia Chetrit, Maisie Cousins, Alessandra d’Urso, Siân Davey, Veronica della Porta, Marco Delogu, Vittoria Di Giovanniello, Alfred Drago Rens, Martin Errichiello, Gabriele Galimberti, Simona Ghizzoni, Manfredi Gioacchini, Francesco Jodice, Philip Jones Griffiths, Mohamed Keita, Irene Kung, Luigi Leoni, Alex Majoli, Emanuele Mascioni, Lorenzo Meloni, Gideon Mendel, Oskar Metsavaht, Landon Metz, Domingo Milella, Davide Monteleone, Marina Paris, Francesca Pasquali, Beatrice Pediconi, Massimo Piersanti, Leonardo Pucci, Carolina Sandretto, Corrado Sassi, Marco Schifano, Alice Schivardi, Johnnie Shand Kydd, Elisa Sighicelli, Massimo Siragusa, John Stezaker, Ornella Tiberi, Riccardo Venturi, Stephen Waddell, Francesco Zizola.

Your Love / Amore Tuo is a simple, though mysterious theme. Pianoterra asked artists and photographers involved: What moves you? What crushes, beats and grinds you, and takes your breath away, then brings you (back) to life? Answers to those questions arrived through the artworks on display, following an invitation to freely reflect on these issues.

The same invite is directed to the viewers. Artists who chose to participate to The Milky Way Foto donating one of their works come from different worlds, from photojournalism to contemporary art, but also from different generations and times.

The Milky Way (which is also a metaphor for the plurality of voices and points of view involved in the project) has since its first edition the mission of giving voice to a good cause with an important project that privileges contemporary creativity. In the previous years the proceeds from the sale of artworks was used to funds activities and interventions in support of vulnerable families in Naples and Rome, to answer to mothers basic needs and build with them structured plans of support, of listening, caring and professional training.

By purchasing one of the works on display at The Milky Way Foto, everyone will have the chance to be part of a path to support Pianoterra’s activities.

Pianoterra helps and supports vulnerable families who live in difficult areas. Its services are directed primarily to mothers and their children because by improving the starting conditions of a young life, many of the health and developmental problems induced by poverty and social isolation can be prevented, and their transmission from one generation to the next averted. With its projects Pianoterra offers pregnant women, new mothers and their children a place where they can feel welcome, listened to and supported, and builds with each person a custom-tailored plan made of counseling with experts of mother-child healthcare and wellbeing, psycho-educational counseling, recreational and creative workshops with other mothers and children, skills assessments and professional training. The main goal of its interventions is always to soothe most urgent need – material needs or emergencies – and make enough room so that each person can find trust in herself and her resources, and express her potentialities and inclinations.

More information on Pianoterra’s several projects in Naples and Rome – that can be supported by buying one of the works on display at The Milky Way Foto – can be found on the association’s website, https://www.pianoterra.net/en/

‘In ten years we have witnessed many small steps […], moments that confirm our initial idea: the welcoming, listening and respect for the other, at the base of our actions, can be not only a precious support in the process of change, but also the entire process’ trigger. Each work of transformation should start from here, bearing in mind that the true potential of each person is often hidden by heavy layers of suffering, struggle and fear’, writes Alessia Bulgari, Pianoterra’s president, in Ten years of Pianoterra, reporting the association’s first the years of activity.