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.