Curated by Alberta Romano
The Nuns’ Refectory of the former Convent of San Mattia, now known as Sala Berti, hosts a new presentation of Unsettling Genealogies by artist and researcher Alessandra Ferrini, curated by Alberta Romano.
Starting with a photograph of the opening of the 1935 Venice Film Festival and the figure of Giuseppe Volpi, Count of Misurata—president of the Biennale, Fascist politician, and a key figure in Italian cultural history—Alessandra Ferrini embarks on a research project that foregrounds the Fascist origins of certain Italian art institutions. In parallel, she explores the private and emotional dimensions of history through reflections on her own family genealogy.
The tension between grand historical narratives and so-called minor histories is what makes Ferrini’s work especially relevant to the questions raised by Kinship and Archive, a research project by Alberta Romano, supported by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture through the Italian Council programme (2025). At its heart is an inquiry into how photographs, films, and amateur recordings survive within family relationships: what is preserved, what is passed down, what remains private, and what is deliberately left unsaid.
In Unsettling Genealogies, the family archive is not simply a source for reconstructing the past, but a place from which to question history and its dynamics. Images, documents, and personal accounts allow the artist to bring out the emotional dimension of history, where individual memory is inseparable from collective memory, revealing its contradictions, omissions, and continuities.
Presenting this research in the fitting setting of the 19th edition of Archivio Aperto means considering the archive as a space where genealogies can become unsettling—not because they offer an alternative, definitive truth, but because they bring to light the ties, silences, and responsibilities that continue to shape the present.
Alessandra Ferrini
Alessandra Ferrini is an Italian artist, researcher, and educator based in the UK. Her work explores the enduring legacies of Italian colonialism and fascism, with a particular focus on past and present relations between Italy, the Mediterranean region, and the African continent. Her practice spans moving image, installation, performance lectures, writing, publishing, and educational projects. Her work has been presented internationally in solo and group exhibitions, as well as in moving-image programmes. She is the winner of the 2022 MAXXI BVLGARI Prize and, in 2024, participated in the 60th Venice Biennale.
