The title of this box set seems like an oxymoron: how can fiction be real? Yet, constantly submerged by images and visual stimuli, anesthetized by an often-misleading representation of the world around us, we can find in the reconstruction of reality an effective way to disassemble and reassemble it, and thus reflect on perceptive distortion.
The Real Fiction collection proposes seven contemporary views of Italian and international authors, suggesting, with their work, this game of re-reading. Provoking with subtle or macroscopic distortions, they invite us to reconsider our certainties.
Alongside the award-winning Périphérique by Mohamed Bourouissa, who navigates the social complexity of the Parisian banlieue by superimposing reportage, fiction, and autobiographical work, we flank the self-portraits of Zanele Muholi in her beautiful Somnyama Ngonyama; an incessant work of reinterpretation of the artist’s identity that reflects on themes such as Eurocentrism and feminism.
From the postmodern approach presented by the conversation triggered by Fontcuberta and Guidi navigating the national iconography in Italy in Miniature, a path between reality and fiction we move on to another photographic archive, created by Peter Ward in his enigmatic The Archive of Bernard Taylor.
One may wonder if the sometimes-grotesque reality presented by Eli Durst in The Four Pillars is the result of a staging approach or the truthful transposition of a life lived differently and what, finally, is the real meaning hidden behind the enigmatic visual tales proposed by Joselito Verschaeve in If I Call Stones Blue it is Because Blue is the Precise Word.
In short, a box set that confuses to clarify. All clear?
