Art

Inhabiting the Contemporary: Jeff Wall and 10 other artists on show in Bologna

A monographic exhibition by the Canadian artist at the Mast and ten exhibitions around the city centre investigate the theme of the home for the seventh edition of the Foto/Industria biennial

by Sanzia Milesi

8 November 2025

Jeff Wall – Volunteer (1996); ©Jeff Wall, Courtesy Glenstone Museum; Jeff Wall – Living, Working, Surviving – mostra monografica su Jeff Wall (Vancouver, 1946); MAST - Bologna, via Speranza 42 (fino all’8 marzo 2026)

5' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

5' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

It is the space of living that is one of the cornerstones in the discussion on contemporaneity. The hearth that is missing, the shelter that is no longer such, habits and identities that begin to waver. In the capital of Emilia, the theme of the home is tackled "artfully", crossing a century in a worldwide perspective, thanks to the seventh edition of Foto/Industria, a biennial photography exhibition of industry and labour promoted by the MAST Foundation of Bologna: Home as an affective place, and not just the building, House. Ten exhibitions by international authors, in seven prestigious venues in the city centre, under the artistic direction of Francesco Zanot (until 14 December), and the monographic exhibition by Canadian photographer Jeff Wall - Living, Working, Surviving at MAST in via Speranza, curated by Urs Stahel (until 8 March). All free admission, with talks, screenings and workshops also scheduled.

'Painter of modern life' - in the sense with which Charles Baudelaire entitled his eulogy to the Crimean War illustrator, Constantin Guys - Jeff Wall is considered to be an artist capable of bringing eternal beauty to the ephemeral moments of everyday life. "A 'one-shot director', as he calls himself. A photographer who 'begins by not photographing', as he explains his meticulously prepared compositions. Wall combines photography with painting (with references ranging from Velazquez to Hopper), cinema (from Fassbinder to Bresson) and literature (one for all, Dostoevsky). Feelings that relive, and bring to life, the continuous present of his shots. "Images," says Wall, "that can be considered a moment of social truth, obtained thanks to the tools of poetry." Thus his tableaux vivants invite the viewer, not just to look, but to continue exploring beyond the scene, wondering, understanding.

Jeff Wall

Jeff Wall - Living, Working, Surviving is an itinerary of twenty-eight works: "an endless cycle with many losers," comments curator Urs Stahel. From 1980 to 2021, there are the famous lightboxes and colour prints, but also large-format black and white, as in Volunteer (1996), a man filmed washing the floor, which he hired for a month to clean his studio, located in a difficult area of downtown Vancouver, where Wall was born in 1946.

'For me,' he confesses, 'this exhibition is a bit unusual, different from all the previous ones in museums and galleries where I am called upon to exhibit my best works, because here at MAST the commitment required is to the real world. (...) As for the narrative, I delete the initial narrative that served me as a canvas. When the image exists, the narrative is replaced by form, colour... and it is the viewer who rewrites the story, which I have just finished erasing, and can have distance from 'my' story."

The home is a complex universe full of meanings - as the artistic director of Foto/Industria, Francesco Zanot, makes clear - "a great industrial challenge, a symbol of belonging, a space of memory and of the transformation of the habits and desires of its inhabitants, an object that changes following technological progress, a cultural artefact". This is how Foto/Industria continues, in a multifaceted way, its journey in the heart of Bologna.

Moira Ricci

Thinking of home can only bring to mind a domestic autobiography of memories and relationships. So it is that at MAMbo Museo d'Arte Moderna, twenty-five years of work on archive materials between family and Maremma by Tuscan Moira Ricci (1977) are displayed in the exhibition Quarta casa: the only one that remains open until 11 January 2026, while the others will close on 14 December 2025.

Ursula Schulz-Dornburg

Understood as architectural projects, combining practical and cultural constructs in relation to resources and the surrounding area, are instead Some Homes 1969-2002 by German photographer Ursula Schulz-Dornburg (1938), who at the Pinacoteca Nazionale investigates housing constructions in different countries, from Iraq to Indonesia, via Holland and Turkey.

Sisto Sisti

As a place of collective life, the Merano workers' village of the Montecatini factory and the families living there from 1935 to 1950 are the focus of the retrospective Microcosmo Sinigo. At the Fondazione del Monte di Bologna e Ravenna, five thematic stations project more than six hundred images by the worker and self-taught photographer Sisto Sisti (Ferrara 1906 - Merano 1981),

Matei Bejenaru

Instead, it is from its urbanisation that the evolution of a nation between economic cycles and ecological changes is told. Having joined the European Union in 2007, the Romania portrayed at Palazzo Bentivoglio with Prut is the one born in a rural context on the banks of the river of the same name. A decade-long documentation project by Romanian Matei Bejenaru (1966).

Forensic Architecture

The building as a "relic" of environmental devastation and armed conflict is the pivot of the artistic and political activity of Forensic Architecture, which here maps the destruction of Palestinian villages since 1948 with Looking for Palestine, at the Palazzo Bentivoglio Lab Subspace. The English study centre, born within Goldsmiths University in London, works by bringing together different subjects - not only architects and artists, but also video-makers and journalists, scientists and lawyers - bringing evidence of human rights violations to public attention: from international courts to the UN, passing through museums and biennials.

Alejandro Cartagena

(Social distances and stratifications illuminate the power dynamics that reside in property ownership. To show this is A Small Guide to Homeownership at Palazzo Vizzani, a thirteen-year study in the suburbs of the Mexican city of Monterrey by the Dominican naturalised Mexican Alejandro Cartagena (1977).

Julia Gainsbacher

Building communities, and not just new architecture. This was the intention of participatory social housing projects, such as the Austrian Gerlitzgründe housing project in Graz. Built in the 1970s by architect Eilfred Huth, it now comes to life again thanks to the shots of Austrian photographer Julia Gainsbacher, born in 1983. My Dream House is not a House is one of three exhibitions at the Fondazione Collegio Venturoli.

Vuyo Mabheka

If the home is an emotional and symbolic place, even more so is that of childhood. At the Fondazione Collegio Venturoli with Pophuis, the South African Vuyo Mabheka (1999) experiences this with his colourful collages, abstracting it among family photo clippings and dolls' houses made with makeshift means (popihuis, a game widespread in the townships).

Mikael Olsson

Moving instead between geometries and memories is the artistic research of Swedish artist Mikael Olsson (1969), which can be visited at the Fondazione Collegio Venturoli. In Södrakull Frösakull the relationship between domestic space and natural landscape is captured in time and reappears in two houses, built by modernist architect Bruno Matthson in Värmamo - one in the 1950s, the other in the 1970s - and re-visited by him between 2000 and 2006.

Kelly O'Brien

Hearth angel par excellence? Like it or not, women. At Spazio Carbonesi,No Rest for the Wicked by British photographer from the Irish underclass Kelly O'Brien thus highlights the gender issue: invisible females and images that denounce their desire to get out of those four walls and see their work recognised.