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The Recovery Plan_Program

The Recovery Plan is a temporary Black Cultural Center created by BHMF for the city of Florence. For one month’s time, the center provides a research platform, exhibition venue, projection room and forum dedicated to Italian rooted meditations on Afro- Descendent cultures that seek to dismantle the expectations and shortcuts that too frequently undermine the complexity and diversity attestable to the African continent and its’ diaspora. Transforming the gallery into a fleeting cultural center the exhibition The Distance Between What We Know and What Can Work, the screening cycle titled, Projecting Beyond Futures and the pop up library, the project affords a glimpse of the broad range of cultural work and scholarship being carried out within the Italian panorama with a transnational focus that bridges the multiple communities that are part of the Florentine landscape.

The Recovery Plan is a temporary Black Cultural Center created by BHMF for the city
of Florence. For one month’s time, the center provides a research platform, exhibition venue, projection room and forum dedicated to Italian rooted meditations on Afro- Descendent cultures that seek to dismantle the expectations and shortcuts that too frequently undermine the complexity and diversity attestable to the African continent
and its’ diaspora. Transforming the gallery into a fleeting cultural center the exhibition
The Distance Between What We Know and What Can Work, the screening cycle titled, Projecting Beyond Futures and the pop up library, the project affords a glimpse of the broad range of cultural work and scholarship being carried out within the Italian panorama with a transnational focus that bridges the multiple communities that are part of the Florentine landscape.

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Diene, venditore ambulante senegalese, sul<br />

ponte Vespucci a Firenze.<br />

La corte ha stabilito che l’omicidio non è<br />

stato aggravato di movente razziale, che<br />

Pirrone era una persona suicidaria ed aveva<br />

intenzione di spararsi, ma ha cambiato idea<br />

all’ultimo e ha sparato alla prima persona<br />

che aveva di fronte, ed a caso era Diene.<br />

Sing, Beloveds. Scream. Be Loud. Remember,<br />

We Were Never Meant to Survive [Rest<br />

in Power, Idy Diene] è un fregio a quattro<br />

riquadri tratto da più immagini della stampa<br />

della comunità senegalese che aveva organizzato<br />

proteste per le strade di Firenze.<br />

Durante la protesta, alcuni vasi da fiori<br />

comunali furono rovesciati e rotti a pezzi.<br />

Di conseguenza, sono stati accusati di<br />

vandalismo e violenza, i vasi (e così anche<br />

la città) sono diventati le vittime, spingendo<br />

la comunità senegalese a raccogliere fondi<br />

<strong>The</strong><br />

per sostituire i vasi rotti ed insistere sul fatto<br />

che non sono violenti, mentre le persone di<br />

colore vengono uccise alla luce del giorno.<br />

Al centro dello spazio, Boswell distrugge<br />

vasi di fiori, In Solidarity and Remembrance.<br />

BIO: Phoebe Boswell, classe 1982, è nata a<br />

Nairobi da madre Kikuyu e padre keniota britannico.<br />

Cresciuta nel Golfo Persico, oggi vive<br />

e lavora a Londra. Il suo lavoro fa referenza a<br />

uno stato irrequieto di coscienza diasporica.<br />

Boswell ha studiato alla Slade School of Art<br />

e Central St Martins. È attualmente borsista<br />

della Bridget Riley Drawing alla British School<br />

di Roma, anche della Ford Foundation. Il<br />

suo lavoro è stato ampiamente esposto in<br />

varie gallerie e fiere d’arte tale Art.15, 1:54<br />

e Expo Chicago, e i suoi lavori sono stati<br />

mostrati al Sundance, al London Film Festival,<br />

al LA Film Festival, tra altri. Nel 2017,<br />

Boswell ha ricevuto il premio speciale Future<br />

Generation Art Prize, esponendo di conseguenza<br />

come parte del programma Collateral<br />

Events alla 57a Biennale di Venezia.<br />

On March 5, 2018, Roberto Pirrone, armed<br />

with a gun, went onto Vespucci Bridge in<br />

Florence, and shot Senegalese street vendor<br />

Idy Diene dead, in broad daylight. <strong>The</strong><br />

court ruled that the murder was not racially<br />

aggravated, that Pirrone was suicidal, was<br />

intending on shooting himself, but changed<br />

his mind at the last minute and shot the first<br />

person he saw, who happened to be Diene.<br />

Sing, Beloveds. Scream. Be Loud. Remember,<br />

We Were Never Meant to Survive [Rest<br />

in Power, Idy Diene] is a four panel frieze<br />

drawn from multiple press images of the<br />

Senegalese community who went out onto<br />

the streets of Florence to protest. During this<br />

protest, some municipal flowerpots were<br />

pushed over and smashed. <strong>The</strong> narrative<br />

that ensued was one of vandalism and violence,<br />

the flowerpots (and consequently the<br />

city) became the victims, and the Senegalese<br />

community ended up raising money to<br />

replace the pots and insist that they are not<br />

Diviolent,<br />

but black people are being murdered<br />

in broad daylight. In the centre of the<br />

space, Boswell smashes pots, In Solidarity<br />

and Remembrance.<br />

BIO: Phoebe Boswell (b. 1982, Kenya), born<br />

in Nairobi to a Kikuyu mother and British<br />

Kenyan father, brought up in the Arabian<br />

Gulf, and now living and working in London,<br />

makes work anchored to a restless state of<br />

diasporic consciousness.<br />

Boswell studied at the Slade School of Art<br />

and Central St Martins. She is currently the<br />

Bridget Riley Drawing Fellow at the British<br />

School at Rome, a Ford Foundation Fellow.<br />

Her work has been widely exhibited with<br />

galleries and art fairs such as Art15, 1:54,<br />

and Expo Chicago, and has screened at<br />

Sundance, the London Film Festival, LA Film<br />

Festival amongst others. She received the<br />

Future Generation Art Prize’s Special Prize<br />

in 2017, consequently exhibiting as part of<br />

the Collateral Events programme at the 57th<br />

Venice Biennale.<br />

Rajkamal Kahlon<br />

Studies for the Dispossessed, 2019 sono<br />

schizzi preliminari ad acquerello creati per il<br />

progetto <strong>The</strong> Dispossessed, commissionato<br />

dal Research Center for Material Culture.<br />

Il progetto, <strong>The</strong> Dispossessed, inizia con<br />

Wilfred <strong>The</strong>siger, un esploratore inglese,<br />

scrittore di viaggio e autore di Arabian<br />

Sands. Pubblicato nel 1959, racconta i suoi<br />

viaggi nel Quartiere Vuoto dell’Arabia, (Rub<br />

‘Al Khali) tra il 1945 e il 1950. Il progetto<br />

consiste in una serie di 6 ritratti di “esploratori”<br />

che arrivano dall’Africa, dall’Asia<br />

del Sud e dal Medio Oriente e vengono<br />

realizzati direttamente sulle pagine tolte e<br />

rimontate di una I edizione di Arabian Sands<br />

di <strong>The</strong>siger. I ritratti mirano a sconvolgere i<br />

modi convenzionali di vedere attraverso il<br />

“code-switching” visivo, sostituendo le iconografie<br />

di viaggio associate alle soggettività<br />

europee per i non europei e problematizzando<br />

il modo in cui interpretiamo il viaggio.<br />

Le opere evidenziano le rappresentazioni<br />

polemiche altamente ideologiche, associate<br />

ai rifugiati e alla migrazione, contrastate con<br />

l’esplorazione e il turismo europei, con una<br />

forma patologizzata, criminalizzata e temuta<br />

e l’altra romantica, normalizzata e fortemente<br />

desiderata.<br />

BIO: Rajkamal Kalon (1974, USA) Ha<br />

ricevuto il suo MFA in Pittura e Disegno dal<br />

California College of Art. Il lavoro di Kahlon<br />

è stato ampiamente esposto in musei, fondazioni<br />

e biennali in Nord America, Europa,<br />

Medio Oriente e Asia tra cui la biennale di<br />

Taipei (2012), Meeting Points 7, MHKA,<br />

HKW, MUAC Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo,<br />

Edith Russ Haus Für Medienkunst,<br />

21er Haus, Museo di Arte Moderna di<br />

Varsavia, NGBK, Queens Museum, Bronx<br />

Museum, Artists’s Space, Apex Art e e-flux.<br />

Studies for the Dispossessed , 2019 are<br />

preliminary watercolor sketches created the<br />

project, <strong>The</strong> Dispossessed, commissioned<br />

by the Research Center for Material Culture.<br />

<strong>The</strong> project, <strong>The</strong> Dispossessed, begins with<br />

Wilfred <strong>The</strong>siger, an English explorer, travel<br />

writer and author of Arabian Sands. Published<br />

in1959, it recounts his travels in the<br />

Empty Quarter of Arabia, (Rub’ Al Khali)<br />

between 1945 and 1950. A set of 6 portraits<br />

of “explorers” arriving from Africa,<br />

South Asia and the Middle East are being<br />

made directly on the pages of a cut apart<br />

and reassembled 1st ed. copy of <strong>The</strong>siger’s<br />

Arabian Sands. <strong>The</strong> portraits aim at<br />

disrupting conventional ways of seeing<br />

through visual code-switching, substituting<br />

the iconographies of travel associated with<br />

European subjectivities for non-Europeans<br />

and to problematize how we see travel.<br />

<strong>The</strong> works highlight the highly ideological,<br />

polemical representations associated with<br />

refugees and migration contrasted against<br />

European exploration and tourism, with one<br />

form pathologized, criminalized and feared<br />

and the other romanticised, normalized and<br />

highly desired.<br />

BIO: Rajkamal Kalon (b. 1974, USA) She<br />

received her MFA in Painting and Drawing<br />

from <strong>The</strong> California College of Art. Kahlon’s<br />

work has been exhibited widely in museums,<br />

foundations and biennials in North<br />

America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia<br />

including the 2012 Taipei Biennial, Meeting<br />

Points 7, MHKA, HKW, MUAC Museo Universitario<br />

Arte Contemporáneo, Edith Russ<br />

Haus Für Medienkunst, 21er Haus, Museum<br />

of Modern Art Warsaw, NGBK, Queens Museum,<br />

Bronx Museum, Artists’ Space, Apex<br />

Art and e-flux.

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