ROME - The fourth edition of “Emerging Talents” opens this month at the Factory space of the MACRO - Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome. Meetings, talks, workshops, and events with young unpublished photographers of the international contemporary scene will take place in Italy.

 For the first time, Italy will hold an emerging Photography Festival, organized in partnership with six international festivals: FORMAT (Derby, UK), DOCfield (Barcelona, Spain), Circulations (Paris, France), Organ Vida (Zagreb, Croatia), Fotofestiwal Lodz (Lodz, Poland), and European Photography (Reggio Emilia, Italy).

 “Emerging Talents” is a project of the Cultural Photo Association, with the artistic direction of Arianna Catania and the organizational management of Sarah Carlet. Numerous exhibitions enliven the fascinating exhibition space of the Factory, with projects selected around the topic “Present, Past, Future.”

 “I called out for mountains, I heard them drumming” is the title of the contribution of the participating Finnish artist, Miia Autio. Her work deals with the relationship of 11 Rwandan refugees to the landscape and their new living environments. Through the media of photography, text, and sound, the work reflects the meaning of landscape, homeland, and identity in the context of political displacement. The complicated history of Rwanda and the recent human rights situation, that still forces many Rwandans to leave their home country, is reflected in the personal histories of those refugees.

 “I portrayed 11 Rwandan refugees in their current landscapes in several countries in Europe. I asked the persons to describe me a place in Rwanda from where they have a strong memory. I traveled to those landscapes of their memories to photograph them. Together the portraits and the landscapes form a layered entity that moves between the past and the present.”

 “The memory that set the frames of our perception. The white canvas can also be seen as a "tabula rasa" on which a person reflects his/her personal life experiences, the original identity formed in the home country but also the experiences in changing environments. I asked the persons to describe me a place in Rwanda from where they have a strong memory.”

 “The starting point of the work might be wistful, dealing with the lost home country, but the outcome is rather positive. Those refugees crossed the borders but finally found their places in Europe. It is an injustice that they had to leave their homes but it is not a tragedy: Now the whole world is differently open to them. In the end, the main question of the work is: Who has a right to have a home country or who has a right to be a part of the construction of national identity? At the same time, there is a question of photographs capability to capture a subject memory, a mental image.”

 “From Rwanda, I brought pictures that are defined and faded. In the end, for us all, a home is a mental image. The memories of the home of those Rwandan refugees are neither present for me, nor for them”.

 Miia Autio was born in 1986 in Reisjärvi, Finland. She lives and works in Helsinki, Finland. She holds BA in photography from the University of Applied Sciences, Lahti and from the University of Applied Sciences, Bielefeld. Her work has been shown in group exhibitions internationally, most recently in the Finnish Museum of Photography and in the Benaki museum at the Athens Photo Festival.

 In 2016 she had her first solo show at Hippolyte Gallery in Helsinki, Finland.

INFO

www.emergingtalents.it

SPAZIO FACTORY- MACRO TESTACCIO

Piazza Orazio Giustiniani, 4, Roma

The exhibitions are open from Tuesday to Sunday at 14.30-20:00, on 2 December 14.30 to 22:00 and on 17 December at 14.30-24:00.

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