Francesco Jodice's Photographic Exhibition at the MANN

The West project on display.

Through an unprecedented institutional collaboration that sparks an equally unprecedented dialogue between archaeological heritage and contemporary photography, the National Archaeological Museum of Naples, directed by Paolo Giulierini, and the Mufoco Museum of Contemporary Photography, chaired by Davide Rondoni, in collaboration with Electa, are organizing and promoting the exhibition WEST Francesco Jodice, curated by Matteo Balduzzi.

Open from November 8, 2023, to January 8, 2024, the exhibition features 20 photographic works by Francesco Jodice from the collections of the Mufoco Museum of Contemporary Photography, presented in Italy for the first time.

The exhibition recounts the rise and fall of the last great Western empire over a period of time between the start of the Gold Rush (1848) and the collapse of Lehman Brothers (2008). Tracing one of the planet's oldest geological structures over three long journeys, undertaken between 2014 and 2022, Francesco Jodice reinterprets a part of our history through a visual repertoire of myths and ruins, utopias, mirages, and failures. Archaeology of a present that is already past. California, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Nebraska, Texas, including adjacent Mexican areas, are some of the states where the Gold Rush took place, territories traversed by Francesco Jodice for his comprehensive research project WEST.

The core of the entire work is found at the crossroads between the peculiar geology of this area and the archaeological ruins (mines, ghost towns, utopias, abandoned complexes and infrastructures) of a period animated by an unstoppable desire for immediate riches.

The work Atlante (2015), the first chapter of a video trilogy that Jodice dedicated to the American Century and which was partially created in the Sala della Meridiana of the MANN, completes the exhibition project and creates a further short circuit in the spaces of the Museum.

The relationship between the WEST project and the exhibition space, with the staging of a visual archaeology of modern Western culture, contributes to a rethinking of the very notion of archaeology, both spatially and temporally, in line with the most current debate in the discipline.

At the same time, it fosters a dialogue between the visual expressions of the past and those of the present, to which the MANN dedicates considerable attention in its temporary exhibition programs. Finally, the exhibition represents an opportunity for the city of Naples to celebrate an internationally renowned artist of Neapolitan origins.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a volume published by Electa, presenting the entire corpus of WEST, consisting of 70 images. The WEST artistic project was supported by the Italian Council (2021th edition, XNUMX), a program for the international promotion of Italian art under the Directorate General for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture. It was created by Mufoco Museo di Fotografia Contemporanea in collaboration with Galerie Le Château d'Eau (Toulouse, FR) and arc en rêve centre d'architecture (Bordeaux, FR).