ALFA PRIVATIVO
PROVOCATIONS ON INCLUSIVITY AND INTERSECTIONALITY IN ART
WITH DONG YIXUAN, PENG SHUAI, ELEONORA ROARO, RAZIEL PERIN, JERMAy MICHEAL GABRIEL

Saturday 11 June, 2022 at Il Vivaio del Malcantone in Florence, Contemporary Matters presented ALFA PRIVATIVO – Provocations on inclusiveness and intersectionality in art, a project, a round table, a provocation curated by Livia Dubon and Silvia Vannacci.

Alfa Privativo is a meeting point, a place where we are called to question, re-imagine, rewrite and share our practices and research. It is the creation of an equal space between professionals, in which it is possible to create, learn and internalize a new vocabulary – and consequently the mental categories that the vocabulary brings with it – to begin to deal with issues still little touched in Italy. Reflect on intersectionality, a term still non-existent in Italian dictionaries; on post-colonial and post-modern practices such as ‘deconstructing’; on the very meaning of identity and being defined in a single ethnic identity, thematic for some problems. This event is intended to be a clean slate where any information content prior to this is canceled or at least, for a moment, forgotten to give life to a new beginning.

In grammar, the privative alpha (alfa privativo in Italian) is the Greek negative prefix α-, which indicates the absence or negation of what is expressed by the rest of the word (amoral, apolitical, etc.). For us Alfa Privativo is a provocation. It is the further graphic sign that is asked to support the Italian language, so historically enriched and burdened that it is apparently unable to describe the newly acquired mental categories of the present. Alfa Privativo is an opportunity to start creating, pronouncing, rethinking words that have their own autonomy and that are not mere compounds that only mean if in antithesis such as anti-racist or non-white.

A round table, Alfa Privativo is in its first manifestation a day that arises from the need to sit in a circle and deal with the artistic community, to de-construct and un-learn certain internalized attitudes / behaviors linked to the perception of the self, of the identity, aesthetics and de-centralizing the point of view by inviting artists whose artistic practice is a reflection on these issues to intervene.

Artists Eleonora Roaro, Raziel Perin, Jermai Michael Gabriel, Peng Shuai Paolo and curator Dong Yixuan Katherine were invited to take part at the round table.

Photos by Giulia Lami.