Students in the School of Arts enjoyed the opportunity to install a traveling art exhibition by leading Italian photographers in the Canterbury campus’ Studio 3 Gallery.
The free exhibition, taking place from 6 – 17 December 2021 and from 17 January – 18 February 2022, has been adapted from Marco Delogu’s ‘Le Piazze [In]visibili (Invisible Squares)’ by students studying the Master’s in Curating.
Invisible Squares is inspired by the impact of Italy’s first lockdown during 2020, when curator Marco Delogu coordinated a team of forty photographers and writers to document the nation’s temporarily empty public squares.
The project challenged the artists during lockdown as they were only able to be outside with permission.
The exhibition’s catalogue includes an essay by architectural historian Joseph Rykwert, who notes that while lockdown impoverished Italy’s piazzas it also provided a rare opportunity to ‘see their complex geometries, their bare bones, and therefore their very structure’.
The exhibition is an initiative of Italy’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation and is shown at the University of Kent thanks to the generosity of the Italian Cultural Institute in London.
Dr Ben Thomas, Reader in Art History and organiser of the exhibition at Kent said: ‘I am grateful to the Italian Cultural Institute for lending this excellent exhibition to the University of Kent which provides an inspiring insight into the beauty and resilience of Italian culture. It has also provided our MA Curating post-graduate students with the valuable opportunity to apply their skills in adapting the show to our gallery space.’