Abitare il silenzio/ Inhabiting silence. Mostra fotografica di Franco Zecchin

Il chiostro e gli scaloni del complesso cinquecentesco di San Giovanni in Monte a Bologna sono ridisegnati dalle fotografie, per la gran parte inedite, di Franco Zecchin. Le immagini descrivono quotidianità nascoste e private della vita claustrale carmelitana, permettendo una concreta risemantizzazione degli spazi e un avvicinamento alle credenze, fatte di gesti, di abitudini e di oggetti.

This exhibition is the result of a lengthy illustrative investigation in col- laboration with historian of religions and anthropologist Francesca Sbardella. It was prepared on the occasion of the conference Forms of Reclusion: Monasteries and Prisons, and is housed in the ancient cloistered settlement of San Giovanni in Monte, now home to the De- partment of History and Cultures of the Alma Mater. The convent, founded in the 10th century and rebuilt several times by the Lateran fathers, took on its current configuration in 1543, at the hands of Bolo- gnese architect Antonio Morandi known as Terribilia. Used as a cour- thouse and prison during the French occupation, it retained the latter function until its acquisition by the University, which redeveloped and reconfigured it with the great Acropolis project (1990-1996). The exhi- bition lends back to the ancient walls the perception of the imagined silences of spirituality and regulation, sharing, with those who frequent them today, the vitality of a represented memory that is not closure but symbolic freedom.