ASIA ARGENTO’S ANALOGICAL ANTHOLOGY
The National Museum of Cinema presents Asia Argento’s Analogical Anthology at the Mole Antonelliana, an exhibition on Asia Argento as a photographer.
The exhibition is curated by Stefano Iachetti and organised by the National Museum of Cinema as a side event of the 34th Lovers Film Festival, that is taking place in Turin from April the 24th to April the 28th, 2019.
Asia Argento is known to the vast public as an actress and a director, and she is less well known as a photographer, despite the fact her images have been published on major national and international magazines. Asia is a photographer, just like Elda Luxardo, her paternal grandmother once was, and has inherited her aesthetic taste, shooting techniques and retouching by hand. Asia Argento and her images printed from 35 mm and Polaroids, sharing part of her world, through her self-portraits, suggestions, colours and graphics.
On the outside fence of the Mole Antonelliana, 23 large images Argento shot between 2001 and 2004 using a 35mm film, with four shots by Stefano Iachetti showing Asia on the set of Misunderstood (Incompresa), the movie she directed in 2013. In the Temple Hall, the heart of the National Museum of Cinema, below the big screen, 170 very evocative Polaroids, which the artist worked on with colours and materials, creating a beguilingly interesting fusion with a wealth of tributes to musicians, actors and artists in general.
A bilingual catalogue published by Scalpendi Editore, entitled Asia Argento Antologia Analogica, edited by Stefano Iachetti, including 27 photographs of the outside panels and a selection of the Polaroids on display, as well as texts by Sergio Toffetti, Stefano Iachetti and an interview to Argento by the curator completes the exhibition.
Actors and actresses perform, theirs is the sort of job you ‘look at’ - underscores Sergio Toffetti, President of the National Museum of Cinema- : not just because we are the ones looking at them when on stage but because they have to constantly look into themselves. They have to look from within to feel the part, and from the outside as the first spectators of their acting. This exhibition stresses the central role of photographs in our collections, an opportunity for the Museum’s collection to establish a dialogue with contemporary creativity”.
“Asia inherited her passion for photography, her aesthetic taste, shooting technique and retouching by hand from her grandmother, -adds Stefano Iachetti, the curator of the exhibition. She proves it in this exhibition and shares part of her world with the visitors, through her self-portraits, faces, suggestions colours and graphics, displaying her ability to look at the world and seize the moment, conveying emotions through her images”.
“Polaroids are what my memory is made of, in fact they are memory itself – says Asia Argento- when I started working in movies in the 1980s we used Polaroids for the link shots because digital photos had not yet been invented. They were so mysterious! It was impossible to imagine what would the shot was going to be like. You couldn’t control it, you could not dominate the result: the camera decided for you. I remember as I child, every time I started a movie, my father used to come and see me on the set and take a Polaroid to hold that moment forever. I have accumulated and kept very many Polaroids and noticed how in time they fade: just like memory the colours change as time goes by, when we manipulate it to make more acceptable to ourselves. White becomes pink, black becomes green, all the colours fade and change shade."