GIGI CIFALI
PHOTO LONDON 2025
NOVA EXPRESS MAGAZINE
London, from 15 to 18 May 2025
Opening: Wednesday 14 May
Stand: W05
Gigi Cifali - Anthology, curated by Gianluigi Ricuperati, Nova Express Magazine, Photo London 2025, Photo Sebastiano Pellion di Persano, Courtesy the artist
In London, from 15 to 18 May 2025, Nova Express Magazine participates in the 10th edition of the international photography fair Photo London presenting at the Somerset House the work by Gigi Cifali curated by Gianluigi Ricuperati.
The booth (W05) features photographs exploring the theme of the collective memory in the “Images and Signs: Italy, 1969-89. Practices of Memory” and environmental awareness in “Sarno”, “White like the seawater”, and “LoW 842” series.
“Images and Signs: Italy, 1969-89. Practices of Memory” (2013-15) retraces the Italian so-called Years of Lead and Strategy of Tension through significant corpora delicti of the far-left and far-right neo-fascist terrorism, reflecting on archives and images as mediators of collective memory. This period in the international context of the Cold War and the Stay-Behind operation, which marked the recent history of Italy, is still in search of truth today. The remembrance sedimented in the material constitutes memory.
In “LoW 842” (2018-19), the anomalies scattered in the poisoned nature of the Terra dei Fuochi (Land of Fires), which in the Anthropocene era we can recognise elsewhere globally, are portrayed in their material dimension and chromatic expression. By positioning himself at a short distance, the photographer brings the viewers equally closer allowing a visual experience that enables them to linger over. Environmental issues concern social justice. They are related to political choices and demand a responsible attitude from everyone: pollution is a violation of the right to life and health.
“Sarno” (2021 - ongoing) observes the surface of the river and its tributaries in the Campania region (Southern Italy), among the most polluted in Europe. The marbled movement of the whitish monochromes of “White like the seawater” (2021) belongs to the discharge of production residues from Solvay on the Tyrrhenian coast of Rosignano (Central Italy). The spills of the sodium carbonate chemical industry have transformed the beach into the so-called “Livorno Caribbean” that, despite the pollution complaints, attracts bathers like an enchanting tourist destination. Both photography series aim to investigate the chromatic perception of water pollution in unnatural and distorted landscapes.
Gigi Cifali, Bitumen littered in nature, LoW 842, 2018-19, C-type print, Courtesy the artist
Gigi Cifali, Sarno #1, 2021 - ongoing, C-type print, Courtesy the artist
Gigi Cifali, White like the seawater #1, 2021, C-type print, Courtesy the artist
Gigi Cifali (1975, Torre del Greco, Naples) lives and works in Milan, Italy. He studied photography at the University of Westminster in London. The artist photographs using a large format camera and explores mostly environmental and collective memory issues. His works have been exhibited at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Rome, Stadtmuseum Baden-Baden (project by the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden and Mucem), Museu do Dinheiro in Lisbon, Fondation François Schneider in Wattwiller, and the Odessa Biennale of Contemporary Art, among others. His photographs on ecological themes are analysed in the book “Arte, ecologia e attivismo. L’opera estesa” by Mariasole Garacci (postmedia books, 2025) considering eleven Italian artists for the “Panorama of 21st-Century Italian Art” project (2022) of the national institution La Quadriennale Foundation in Rome. Also, the volumes “The Swimming Pool in Photography” with texts by Francis Hodgson (Hatje Cantz, 2018) and “La Photographie contemporaine” by Michel Poivert (Flammarion, 2025) include his photography series. The history book “C’era una volta in Italia. Gli anni Settanta” by Enrico Deaglio with Ivan Carozzi (Feltrinelli, 2024) about Italian ‘70s features photographs of the “Images and Signs: Italy, 1969-89. Practices of Memory” series on the cover and inside.
Gigi Cifali, Brown blanket with bullet holes - Murder of Aldo Moro (Rome, 09.05.1978), Images and Signs: Italy, 1969-89. Practices of Memory, 2013-15, C-type print, Courtesy the artist
Gigi Cifali, Renault 4 - Murder of Aldo Moro (Rome, 09.05.1978) #2, Images and Signs: Italy, 1969-89. Practices of Memory, 2013-15, C-type print, Courtesy the artist
Gigi Cifali, Destroyed portico column - Piazza della Loggia Bombing (Brescia, 28.05.1974), Images and Signs: Italy, 1969-89. Practices of Memory, 2013-15, C-type print, Courtesy the artist
Gigi Cifali, Alfa Romeo Alfetta 1.8 - Kidnapping of Aldo Moro (Rome, 16.03.1978) #2, Images and Signs: Italy, 1969-89. Practices of Memory, 2013-15, C-type print, Courtesy the artist
Shirt A.M. - Murder of Aldo Moro (Rome, 09.05.1978), C-type print, 90 x 72 cm
Brown blanket with bullet holes - Murder of Aldo Moro (Rome, 09.05.1978), C-type print, 90 x 72 cm
Renault 4 - Murder of Aldo Moro (Rome, 09.05.1978) #1, C-type print, 50 x 40 cm
Renault 4 - Murder of Aldo Moro (Rome, 09.05.1978) #2, C-type print, 50 x 40 cm
Alfa Romeo Alfetta 1.8 - Kidnapping of Aldo Moro (Rome, 16.03.1978) #2, C-type print, 72 x 90 cm
Destroyed portico column - Piazza della Loggia Bombing (Brescia, 28.05.1974), C-type print, 50 x 40 cm
From the series Images and Signs: Italy, 1969-89. Practices of Memory, 2013-15
#1, C-type print, 50 x 40 cm
From the series Sarno, 2021 - ongoing
#1, C-type print, 50 x 40 cm
From the series White like the seawater, 2021
Bitumen littered in nature, C-type print, 50 x 40 cm
Burnt glass wool at the roadside of rural land #1, C-type print, 50 x 40 cm
Metal waste littered in a sequestered field #1, C-type print, 50 x 40 cm
From the series LoW 842, 2018-19
Gigi Cifali, Alfa Romeo Alfetta 1.8 - Kidnapping of Aldo Moro (Rome, 16.03.1978) #2, Images and Signs: Italy, 1969-89. Practices of Memory, 2013-15, C-type print, Courtesy the artist
Nova Express Magazine
Gigi Cifali
Curated by Gianluigi Ricuperati
Booth: W05
Photo London
10th Edition
London, from 15 to 18 May 2025
Preview: Wednesday 14 May
Somerset House
Strand, WC2R 1LA
Wednesday 14 May, 11:00 am - 9:00 pm: VIP
Thursday 15 May, 11:00 am - 1:00 pm: VIP; 1:00 - 8:00 pm: Public
Friday 16 May, 11:00 am - 1:00 pm: VIP; 1:00 - 8:00 pm: Public
Saturday 17 May, 11:00 am - 12:00 pm: VIP; 12:00 - 8:00 pm: Public
Sunday 18 May, 11:00 am - 12:00 pm: VIP; 12:00 - 6:00 pm: Public
IG
@novaexpress_mag
@gigi_cifali
www.gigicifali.com
Press Office
studio@gigicifali.com / tamara@theknackstudio.com
Tamara Lorenzi / +39 347 0712934
Images and Signs: Italy, 1969-89. Practices of Memory (2013-15)
The photography series titled “Images and Signs: Italy, 1969-89. Practices of Memory” retraces the Italian so-called Years of Lead (Anni di piombo) and Strategy of Tension (Strategia della tensione), two decades of “red” far-left and “black” far-right terrorism that are still shrouded in mystery and in search of truth. This inability to face the traumatic past feeds conflicting memories and compromises history teaching.
Watching documentaries has shown me how limited my knowledge of a period was - deprived of a shared socially legitimized representation - that has marked the history of Italy.
I, therefore, decided to investigate the mechanisms that regulate the transmission of the collective memory and the role of the archives. The philosopher and sociologist Maurice Halbwachs asserts that every social group selectively preserves images of the past, retaining what is functional to the interests of the present. The past leaves traces, but then it is the present that remembers. And, as the philosopher Jacques Derrida argues: there is no political power without control of the archive, if not memory.
I chose to proceed backwards, looking for remnants - tangible and visually less known to the public -, of both extreme left-wing terrorism of the Marxist-Leninist armed groups and right-wing neo-fascist stragismo (massacre-ism) with some State apparatuses in the international context of the Cold War and Stay-Behind operation.
There is no memory without knowledge and to remember we also need to consult the archives. With the support of officials from the Ministry of the Interior, Attorneys General, and members of the Police forces, I was allowed access to the bodies of evidence kept in the court offices - such as objects seized in the hideouts of terrorists and personal belongings of the victims - and in the impounds where are held vehicles hit in ambushes.
The archives preserve through time subjecting to the limits of storage capacities. Selection, sorting, and disposal are just as decisive as any collecting and conservation action. Moreover, the evaluation criteria might not be agreed on by the future generations.
Like an archaeological exploration, I could not predict what I would find. Many objects that I wished I could photograph no longer exist, while others are deteriorating. The absence of information concerns not only the knowledge that we inherit but also the nature of archives, which are places of voids of information. Their custodians will increasingly be those who have the power to decide what to reproduce on more durable media.
This triggers a particularly actual and felt reflection on the conservation of documents and remnants of a significant piece of history. Remembering and not remembering is a social activity with an ethical side: forgetting is a fault. Memory has a distributive nature, being conveyed by texts, documents, and images that relate to each other, helping to build a cohesive sense of the past, which is essential for the construction of a present identity.
The collective imagination primarily draws from the footage and photographs of the time, which have had greater diffusion through the media. The use of colour sheet films offers a new perspective and contemporizes the relationship with a reality that has largely been represented in black and white.
Some returned signs are not recognized, even though they belong to central moments that have decided the course of Italy’s history over the past fifty years. The images of remaining traces and what has disappeared act as memory mediators of events that for the adult generation belong to the recent past and therefore are inseparable from the biographical memory, while for the young people, they are already part of the History.
In relation to my past, it brought back childhood memories, even of when my father, a worker and trade unionist in the mechanical department at Alfa Romeo in Pomigliano d’Arco, told of the growing concern in the factories.
With the sharpness of the large format’s details, framing captures frozen signs. I opted to position the camera just a few centimetres away, allowing the observer to get equally close. This incites a perceptual experience that encourages them to pause and concentrate their attention.
The remembrance sedimented in the material constitutes memory: the holes on the shirt that Aldo Moro wore on the day of his murder and on the blanket with which he was covered, the stone destroyed by the bomb in Piazza della Loggia and the clothing of the victims, car bodies riddled with bullets, the rudimentary bomb defused on the 154 Trieste - Paris train at Milan Central Station, four sheets of an Italsider notepad with Guido Rossa’s reflections on red and black terrorism, political conspiracy, and anti-communist ganglia of the State. The analysis by the worker and CGIL trade unionist - handwritten shortly before he was killed by the Red Brigades in 1979 - was shared by his daughter for the first time.
Lorenzo Migliorati, a scholar in the sociology of memory, wrote: “These corpora delicti, or bodies of crime, are real practices of memory, substantiated by material culture, which sediment the narrative of our (in the sense of national community) memory. They will inhabit us and inform our identity, even if we do not see them, until we name them and go through them. Cifali’s work is powerful also for this reason: it gives shape, name, and substance to objects that we might never have seen.”
Gigi Cifali
GIGI CIFALI
PHOTO LONDON 2025
NOVA EXPRESS MAGAZINE
London, from 15 to 18 May 2025
Opening: Wednesday 14 May
Stand: W05
Gigi Cifali - Anthology, curated by Gianluigi Ricuperati, Nova Express Magazine, Photo London 2025, Photo Sebastiano Pellion di Persano, Courtesy the artist
In London, from 15 to 18 May 2025, Nova Express Magazine participates in the 10th edition of the international photography fair Photo London presenting at the Somerset House the work by Gigi Cifali curated by Gianluigi Ricuperati.
The booth (W05) features photographs exploring the theme of the collective memory in the “Images and Signs: Italy, 1969-89. Practices of Memory” and environmental awareness in “Sarno”, “White like the seawater”, and “LoW 842” series.
“Images and Signs: Italy, 1969-89. Practices of Memory” (2013-15) retraces the Italian so-called Years of Lead and Strategy of Tension through significant corpora delicti of the far-left and far-right neo-fascist terrorism, reflecting on archives and images as mediators of collective memory. This period in the international context of the Cold War and the Stay-Behind operation, which marked the recent history of Italy, is still in search of truth today. The remembrance sedimented in the material constitutes memory.
In “LoW 842” (2018-19), the anomalies scattered in the poisoned nature of the Terra dei Fuochi (Land of Fires), which in the Anthropocene era we can recognise elsewhere globally, are portrayed in their material dimension and chromatic expression. By positioning himself at a short distance, the photographer brings the viewers equally closer allowing a visual experience that enables them to linger over. Environmental issues concern social justice. They are related to political choices and demand a responsible attitude from everyone: pollution is a violation of the right to life and health.
“Sarno” (2021 - ongoing) observes the surface of the river and its tributaries in the Campania region (Southern Italy), among the most polluted in Europe. The marbled movement of the whitish monochromes of “White like the seawater” (2021) belongs to the discharge of production residues from Solvay on the Tyrrhenian coast of Rosignano (Central Italy). The spills of the sodium carbonate chemical industry have transformed the beach into the so-called “Livorno Caribbean” that, despite the pollution complaints, attracts bathers like an enchanting tourist destination. Both photography series aim to investigate the chromatic perception of water pollution in unnatural and distorted landscapes.
Gigi Cifali, Bitumen littered in nature, LoW 842, 2018-19, C-type print, Courtesy the artist
Gigi Cifali, Sarno #1, 2021 - ongoing, C-type print, Courtesy the artist
Gigi Cifali, White like the seawater #1, 2021, C-type print, Courtesy the artist
Gigi Cifali (1975, Torre del Greco, Naples) lives and works in Milan, Italy. He studied photography at the University of Westminster in London. The artist photographs using a large format camera and explores mostly environmental and collective memory issues. His works have been exhibited at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Rome, Stadtmuseum Baden-Baden (project by the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden and Mucem), Museu do Dinheiro in Lisbon, Fondation François Schneider in Wattwiller, and the Odessa Biennale of Contemporary Art, among others. His photographs on ecological themes are analysed in the book “Arte, ecologia e attivismo. L’opera estesa” by Mariasole Garacci (postmedia books, 2025) considering eleven Italian artists for the “Panorama of 21st-Century Italian Art” project (2022) of the national institution La Quadriennale Foundation in Rome. Also, the volumes “The Swimming Pool in Photography” with texts by Francis Hodgson (Hatje Cantz, 2018) and “La Photographie contemporaine” by Michel Poivert (Flammarion, 2025) include his photography series. The history book “C’era una volta in Italia. Gli anni Settanta” by Enrico Deaglio with Ivan Carozzi (Feltrinelli, 2024) about Italian ‘70s features photographs of the “Images and Signs: Italy, 1969-89. Practices of Memory” series on the cover and inside.
Gigi Cifali, Brown blanket with bullet holes - Murder of Aldo Moro (Rome, 09.05.1978), Images and Signs: Italy, 1969-89. Practices of Memory, 2013-15, C-type print, Courtesy the artist
Gigi Cifali, Renault 4 - Murder of Aldo Moro (Rome, 09.05.1978) #2, Images and Signs: Italy, 1969-89. Practices of Memory, 2013-15, C-type print, Courtesy the artist
Gigi Cifali, Destroyed portico column - Piazza della Loggia Bombing (Brescia, 28.05.1974), Images and Signs: Italy, 1969-89. Practices of Memory, 2013-15, C-type print, Courtesy the artist
Gigi Cifali, Alfa Romeo Alfetta 1.8 - Kidnapping of Aldo Moro (Rome, 16.03.1978) #2, Images and Signs: Italy, 1969-89. Practices of Memory, 2013-15, C-type print, Courtesy the artist
Shirt A.M. - Murder of Aldo Moro (Rome, 09.05.1978), C-type print, 90 x 72 cm
Brown blanket with bullet holes - Murder of Aldo Moro (Rome, 09.05.1978), C-type print, 90 x 72 cm
Renault 4 - Murder of Aldo Moro (Rome, 09.05.1978) #1, C-type print, 50 x 40 cm
Renault 4 - Murder of Aldo Moro (Rome, 09.05.1978) #2, C-type print, 50 x 40 cm
Alfa Romeo Alfetta 1.8 - Kidnapping of Aldo Moro (Rome, 16.03.1978) #2, C-type print, 72 x 90 cm
Destroyed portico column - Piazza della Loggia Bombing (Brescia, 28.05.1974), C-type print, 50 x 40 cm
From the series Images and Signs: Italy, 1969-89. Practices of Memory, 2013-15
#1, C-type print, 50 x 40 cm
From the series Sarno, 2021 - ongoing
#1, C-type print, 50 x 40 cm
From the series White like the seawater, 2021
Bitumen littered in nature, C-type print, 50 x 40 cm
Burnt glass wool at the roadside of rural land #1, C-type print, 50 x 40 cm
Metal waste littered in a sequestered field #1, C-type print, 50 x 40 cm
From the series LoW 842, 2018-19
Gigi Cifali, Alfa Romeo Alfetta 1.8 - Kidnapping of Aldo Moro (Rome, 16.03.1978) #2, Images and Signs: Italy, 1969-89. Practices of Memory, 2013-15, C-type print, Courtesy the artist
Nova Express Magazine
Gigi Cifali
Curated by Gianluigi Ricuperati
Booth: W05
Photo London
10th Edition
London, from 15 to 18 May 2025
Preview: Wednesday 14 May
Somerset House
Strand, WC2R 1LA
Wednesday 14 May, 11:00 am - 9:00 pm: VIP
Thursday 15 May, 11:00 am - 1:00 pm: VIP; 1:00 - 8:00 pm: Public
Friday 16 May, 11:00 am - 1:00 pm: VIP; 1:00 - 8:00 pm: Public
Saturday 17 May, 11:00 am - 12:00 pm: VIP; 12:00 - 8:00 pm: Public
Sunday 18 May, 11:00 am - 12:00 pm: VIP; 12:00 - 6:00 pm: Public
IG
@novaexpress_mag
@gigi_cifali
www.gigicifali.com
Press Office
studio@gigicifali.com / tamara@theknackstudio.com
Tamara Lorenzi / +39 347 0712934
Images and Signs: Italy, 1969-89. Practices of Memory (2013-15)
The photography series titled “Images and Signs: Italy, 1969-89. Practices of Memory” retraces the Italian so-called Years of Lead (Anni di piombo) and Strategy of Tension (Strategia della tensione), two decades of “red” far-left and “black” far-right terrorism that are still shrouded in mystery and in search of truth. This inability to face the traumatic past feeds conflicting memories and compromises history teaching.
Watching documentaries has shown me how limited my knowledge of a period was - deprived of a shared socially legitimized representation - that has marked the history of Italy.
I, therefore, decided to investigate the mechanisms that regulate the transmission of the collective memory and the role of the archives. The philosopher and sociologist Maurice Halbwachs asserts that every social group selectively preserves images of the past, retaining what is functional to the interests of the present. The past leaves traces, but then it is the present that remembers. And, as the philosopher Jacques Derrida argues: there is no political power without control of the archive, if not memory.
I chose to proceed backwards, looking for remnants - tangible and visually less known to the public -, of both extreme left-wing terrorism of the Marxist-Leninist armed groups and right-wing neo-fascist stragismo (massacre-ism) with some State apparatuses in the international context of the Cold War and Stay-Behind operation.
There is no memory without knowledge and to remember we also need to consult the archives. With the support of officials from the Ministry of the Interior, Attorneys General, and members of the Police forces, I was allowed access to the bodies of evidence kept in the court offices - such as objects seized in the hideouts of terrorists and personal belongings of the victims - and in the impounds where are held vehicles hit in ambushes.
The archives preserve through time subjecting to the limits of storage capacities. Selection, sorting, and disposal are just as decisive as any collecting and conservation action. Moreover, the evaluation criteria might not be agreed on by the future generations.
Like an archaeological exploration, I could not predict what I would find. Many objects that I wished I could photograph no longer exist, while others are deteriorating. The absence of information concerns not only the knowledge that we inherit but also the nature of archives, which are places of voids of information. Their custodians will increasingly be those who have the power to decide what to reproduce on more durable media.
This triggers a particularly actual and felt reflection on the conservation of documents and remnants of a significant piece of history. Remembering and not remembering is a social activity with an ethical side: forgetting is a fault. Memory has a distributive nature, being conveyed by texts, documents, and images that relate to each other, helping to build a cohesive sense of the past, which is essential for the construction of a present identity.
The collective imagination primarily draws from the footage and photographs of the time, which have had greater diffusion through the media. The use of colour sheet films offers a new perspective and contemporizes the relationship with a reality that has largely been represented in black and white.
Some returned signs are not recognized, even though they belong to central moments that have decided the course of Italy’s history over the past fifty years. The images of remaining traces and what has disappeared act as memory mediators of events that for the adult generation belong to the recent past and therefore are inseparable from the biographical memory, while for the young people, they are already part of the History.
In relation to my past, it brought back childhood memories, even of when my father, a worker and trade unionist in the mechanical department at Alfa Romeo in Pomigliano d’Arco, told of the growing concern in the factories.
With the sharpness of the large format’s details, framing captures frozen signs. I opted to position the camera just a few centimetres away, allowing the observer to get equally close. This incites a perceptual experience that encourages them to pause and concentrate their attention.
The remembrance sedimented in the material constitutes memory: the holes on the shirt that Aldo Moro wore on the day of his murder and on the blanket with which he was covered, the stone destroyed by the bomb in Piazza della Loggia and the clothing of the victims, car bodies riddled with bullets, the rudimentary bomb defused on the 154 Trieste - Paris train at Milan Central Station, four sheets of an Italsider notepad with Guido Rossa’s reflections on red and black terrorism, political conspiracy, and anti-communist ganglia of the State. The analysis by the worker and CGIL trade unionist - handwritten shortly before he was killed by the Red Brigades in 1979 - was shared by his daughter for the first time.
Lorenzo Migliorati, a scholar in the sociology of memory, wrote: “These corpora delicti, or bodies of crime, are real practices of memory, substantiated by material culture, which sediment the narrative of our (in the sense of national community) memory. They will inhabit us and inform our identity, even if we do not see them, until we name them and go through them. Cifali’s work is powerful also for this reason: it gives shape, name, and substance to objects that we might never have seen.”
Gigi Cifali
