Turin. Alternate Take (2006) Photography cm 125×152
Iye Omoge (2006) Plastic panels cm 112×147
First Class (2005) Photography cm 80×100
Second Class (2005) Photography cm 80×100
Third Class (2005) Photography cm 80×100
Girls in the First Class (2006) Plastic panels cm 66×96
The Second Class (2006) Plastic panels cm 66×96
The Beginning (2006) Plastic panels cm 66×96
Nottingham, Residual: Traces of the Black Body, curated by Christine Eyene, New Art Exchange, March 2015
Nottingham, Residual: Traces of the Black Body, curated by Christine Eyene, New Art Exchange, March 2015
Rijeka, Smuggling Anthologies, curated by Giuliana Carbi, Ana Peraica, Sabina Salamon and Marija Terpin Mlinar, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, October 2013 (Photo by Robert Sošić)
Rijeka, Smuggling Anthologies, curated by Giuliana Carbi, Ana Peraica, Sabina Salamon and Marija Terpin Mlinar, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, October 2013 (Photo by Robert Sošić)
Rijeka, Smuggling Anthologies, curated by Giuliana Carbi, Ana Peraica, Sabina Salamon and Marija Terpin Mlinar, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, October 2013 (Photo by Robert Sošić)
Ancona, Vertigo of Reality, curated by Gabriele Tinti, Mole Vanvitelliana, February 2012
Ancona, Vertigo of Reality, curated by Gabriele Tinti, Mole Vanvitelliana, February 2012
Ancona, Vertigo of Reality, curated by Gabriele Tinti, Mole Vanvitelliana, February 2012
Turin, Alternate Takes, curated by Luigi Fassi, Carbone.to Gallery, February 2006
Turin, Alternate Takes, curated by Luigi Fassi, Carbone.to Gallery, February 2006
Turin, Alternate Takes, curated by Luigi Fassi, Carbone.to Gallery, February 2006
Turin, Alternate Takes, curated by Luigi Fassi, Carbone.to Gallery, February 2006
Iye Omoge (2005) – Artist’s proof – Plastic panels cm 72×88
Iye Omoge Square Grey I (2006) – Artist’s proof – Plastic panels cm 45×45
Iye Omoge Square Grey II (2006) – Artist’s proof – Plastic panels cm 45×45
Iye Omoge Square Grey III (2006) – Artist’s proof – Plastic panels cm 45×45
Iye Omoge Square White (2006) – Artist’s proof – Plastic panels cm 45×45
Iye Omoge Proof Grey (2006) – Artist’s proof – Plastic panels cm 47×67
Iye Omoge Proof White (2006) – Artist’s proof – Plastic panels cm 48×68
Iye Omoge consists of photographs and maps of Corso Regina Margherita, a road in Turin which runs alongside a park. It recalls the time when the pavement was divided up into areas by Nigerian sex workers who frequented the place until 2002.
The presence of Nigerian women has dramatically changed the city where I was born and where I lived for a long time. Turin was a decidedly provincial town until the eighties and the arrival of the first migrants from distant countries. Within the motley world of immigrants who settled in the city, this fragment of the large Nigerian Diaspora distinguished itself by the impact it had on the direct experience and collective consciousness of Turin’s inhabitants. This question should be further investigated and there will be other opportunities to do so.
My work Iye Omoge tells the story of a particular place where Nigerian women and the city of Turin met, on the pavement of a road called Corso Regina Margherita which runs alongside Pellerina park. All through the nineties this was the stage for Nigerian prostitution, the most famous in Italy. Every night, more than two hundred women and girls would crowd on its eight hundred metres of pavement. Sexual intercourse took place outdoors in secluded areas of the park, or nearby in a car with a client.
When I carried out this work, between 2005 and 2006, there were no more Nigerians in the area. The decision of the municipal administration to close the road at night, and the first fines given to clients, had the effect of dispersing the women to neighbouring areas, or even much further away. It is likely that this decision was taken in view of the 2006 Winter Olympics, as Corso Regina Margherita is one of the main traffic arteries and a port of entry into the city, just off the ring road.
Photographing Corso Regina in early 2006 was not accidental. I wanted to do something delicate and rarefied for my last show in the gallery of Guido Carbone, who at the time was very ill and who died shortly afterwards. We opened the exhibition during the Turin Olympics, preparing it quickly and taking the last photograph, a wide shot from the platform of a cherry picker, at the very last minute (you can just glimpse the banners of the event). Turning back to the Nigerian ghosts of Corso Regina was my personal antidote to the postcard rhetoric of the period. I wanted to dredge up a fascinating and oddly shaped stone from the pond of oblivion, a part of the history of Turin hidden from most of its inhabitants.
© Cristiano Berti
excerpt from «Black Torino», in Smuggling Anthologies Reader, ed. by Ana Peraica, Rijeka: Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (ISBN 978-953-6501-93-9), 2015, pp. 264 – 265
How does memory work? What traces do events leave in the places we inhabit? But also, what relationship is established between ourselves and the space around us? These are the questions asked by the apparently inert, indifferent photographs in the exhibition. They open the way for an unusual and surprising form of urban case history, in other words, the possibility of re-accessing memories of past events in a place where culturally sophisticated operations have taken place.
Berti’s exercise can be defined as extreme because he focuses on a radical dichotomy between the memory of a place and the total absence of any indications that can help us to reach it from the present. The pictures offer no clues, but they are pure reassurance, a phenomenon that is founded entirely on urban daily life. So for Berti, memory proves to be a prevalently intellectual activity, free from any percept or material residue. Paradoxically, the memory pursued by the artist is one without recall, far from the fertile fixity of the single revealing image that was so dear to Proust and the culture of the 19th century. Berti’s artistic production, which is built around a strong philosophical and speculative matrix, seems to be illuminated by Henri Bergson’s comments on the radically intuitive nature of memory.
© Luigi Fassi
excerpt from Alternate Takes, exhibition leaflet, Turin: Carbone.to, 2006
The Iye Omoge photographs were taken between 2005 and 2006. They are pictures of the work areas identified by the Nigerian women and a bird’s eye view of the road, taken from a raised platform. Three photographs of identical size are entitled according to the partition of the areas (First Class, Second Class, Third Class). The fourth photograph is a larger one and is entitled Turin. Alternate Take.
The mappings reproduce this dimensional structure. The four maps are cut out from overlaid plastic panels. The overall installation of the work creates a link between the two triptychs and the two large scale works.
Phrases inserted into the maps have been sourced from an account by a woman who used to work in Corso Regina Margherita. A text accompanying the installation is also based upon this speech.
The full account of the woman was first presented in the web version of this project (in the extinguished website m-ia.net).
Iye Omoge (2005-2006): Four photographs digitalised from negative, and four panels of plastic material overlaid and carved, each forming an individual work
Lambda print, cm 80×100 (First Class; Second Class; Third Class: 2005). Edition of 5 + 1 AP
Lambda print, cm 125×152 (Turin. Alternate Take: 2006). Edition of 5 + 1 AP (cm 104×130)
Carved polypropylene, cm 66×96 (The Beginning: 2006); cm 66×96 (Girls in the First Class: 2006); cm 66×96 (The Second Class: 2006); cm 112×147 (Iye Omoge: 2006). Uniques
There are seven proofs of the maps, in various sizes and colours. Carved polypropylene, cm 72×88 (Iye Omoge: 2005); cm 45×45 (Iye Omoge Square Grey I; II; III; White: 2006) cm 47×67 (Iye Omoge Proof Grey: 2006); cm 48×68 (Iye Omoge Proof White: 2006). Uniques
Photographs by Piero Ottaviano
Webproject: http://www.m-ia.net > Projects > Iye Omoge (extinct website)
Webdesign by Cristiano Berti and Nicola Brigati
Audio record (Turin, December 2005) by Riccardo Ruggieri
Audio editing by Antonio Lucarini
2012
Vertigo of Reality, curated by Gabriele Tinti, with a text by Luigi Fassi, Mole Vanvitelliana, Ancona, Italy
2006
Alternate Takes, curated by Luigi Fassi, Carbone.to Gallery, Turin, Italy
2015
Residual: Traces of the Black Body, curated by Christine Eyene, part of Format International Photography Festival, New Art Exchange, Nottingham, United Kingdom
2014
Smuggling Anthologies. Storie di contrabbando, curated by Giuliana Carbi, Ana Peraica, Sabina Salamon and Marija Terpin Mlinar, Trieste Contemporanea/Studio Tommaseo, Trieste, Italy
Smuggling Anthologies. Contrabbandum, curated by Giuliana Carbi, Ana Peraica, Sabina Salamon and Marija Terpin Mlinar, Municipal Museum, Idrija, Slovenia
2013
Smuggling Anthologies, curated by Giuliana Carbi, Ana Peraica, Sabina Salamon and Marija Terpin Mlinar, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Rijeka, Croatia
2008
Questo mondo è fantastico. Venti anni con Guido Carbone, Palazzo Bricherasio, Turin, Italy
2006
Mia.net Launch, Coleman Projects, London, United Kingdom
2005
Disegnando, Carbone.to Gallery, Turin, Italy
2006
Iye Omoge, webproject, in M-ia.net [Memory in Art] – extinct website
2014
Iye Omoge, artist talk (November 7), in Smuggling Anthologies International Conference, Revoltella Museum, Trieste, Italy
Black Turin: Stories of Nigerian Diaspora in Italy, artist talk (September 12), in Smuggling Anthologies Symposium, Gewerkenegg Castle, Idrija, Slovenia
2013
Black Torino: Iye Omoge and Other Stories, artist talk (October 23), in Smuggling Anthologies Symposium, Astronomical Center, Rijeka, Croatia
2008
Iye Omoge, speaker (October 23), at the International Conference Migration in Museums: Narratives of Diversity in Europe, Erinnerungsstätte Notaufnahmelager Marienfelde, Berlin, Germany
2015
Berti, Cristiano, «Black Torino», in Smuggling Anthologies Reader, ed. by Ana Peraica, Rijeka: Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (ISBN 978-953-6501-93-9), pp. 262 – 265
Eyene, Christine, «Residual: Traces of the Black Body», Eye on Art, blog, February 6
2012
Cristiano Berti. Vertigine del Reale/Vertigo of Reality, exhibition catalogue, Turin: Allemandi (ISBN 978-88-422-2104-3), pp. 74 – 85, 162 – 163
Fassi, Luigi, «The Vertigo of Reality/La vertigine del reale», in Cristiano Berti. Vertigine del Reale/Vertigo of Reality (previously cited), pp. 152 – 153/145 – 147
2008
Beatrice, Luca, «Guido Carbone’s Gallery: 1985 – 2006/La galleria di Guido Carbone. 1985 – 2006», in Questo mondo è fantastico. Vent’anni con Guido Carbone, Milan: Electa (ISBN 978-88-370-6244-6), p. 80
2006
«Cristiano Berti in Alternate takes. Dal jazz impara ad essere imprevedibile», Arte (Milan), 390: February, p. 166
«Cristiano Berti’s photo exhibition ‘Alternate Takes’», Blackbookmag.com
Fassi, Luigi, Alternate Takes, exhibition leaflet, Turin: Carbone.to
Gambari, Olga, «Diciotto ‘vernici’ in galleria. E l’arte diventa un happening», La Repubblica – Torino (Rome), XXXI, 38: February 15, p. XI
Gili, Angiola Maria, «Pellerina, la Piccola Africa. Alternate Takes: mappe, fotografie e indizi nell’indagine sociale del trentanovenne Berti», Torino Sette, 872: March 17 – 23 (insert of La Stampa, Turin, CXL, : March 17), p. 82
Moliterni, Rocco, «Berti e la Pellerina», TuttoLibri, Arte, XXX, 1502: February 25 (insert of La Stampa, Turin, CXL, : February 25), p. 9
Santoni, Simona, «Cristiano Berti a Torino. Mostra del giovane artista alla galleria Carbone», Corriere Adriatico (Ancona), Jesi, CXLVI, 65: March 7, p. VII
Sereno, Paola, «Cristiano Berti – Alternate takes», Teknemedia.net, February 12
Tinti, Gabriele «Cristiano Berti – Alternate takes», Exibart.com, February 27