Section hosting established galleries presenting works united by a common thread.

Section for galleries with an activity focused on promoting international artists, whose exhibition project – designed ad hoc – is aimed at creating a dialogue between photography and other media such as sculpture, installation, painting and video.

Domenico De Chirico [Independent curator]
Domenico de Chirico is an independent curator from Italy. Born in Bari, Italy in 1983, he lives and works in Milan. He graduated with honours in Foreign Languages and Literatures with a final dissertation dealing with Comparative History of Art in Eastern European Countries (with a particular focus on Dan and Lia Perjovschi). From 2011 until 2015 he was a professor in “Visual Culture” and “Trend Research” at Milan’s European Institute of Design (IED). He collaborates with a number of international artists, galleries, institutions, art fairs, art prizes, and magazines worldwide. He has been artistic director at DAMA Fair, Turin, Italy (2016-2019). He was also a visiting tutor at Goldsmiths, University of London (2018) and a member of the Network Event for Young Curators, LISTE – Art Fair Basel, Basel, Switzerland (2018). Upcoming projects and researches: Swab Barcelona Contemporary Art Fair, Barcelona, Spain (committee member); Roma Arte in Nuvola: Fiera internazionale d’arte contemporanea, Rome, Italy (advisor); MIA Photo Fair, Milan, Italy (guest curator); BIENVENUE Art Fair, Paris, France (curator); Prisma Art Prize, Rome, Italy (curator); Swiss Institute, Rome (visiting curator). Upcoming exhibitions in various venues.

Project management by Marialuisa Pastò [independent curator, Art editor]

The “Reportage Beyond Reportage” section invites the viewer to take a journey through images among the indelible and in some cases poignant stories of reportage. A path that winds between past and present, underlining the changes that have taken place in the world of photography with the digital revolution and the advent of real-time news. The selected galleries work with artists ranging from documentary photography to photojournalism, using both color and black and white, telling stories of life, war, migration, freedom, hope, natural and climatic disasters, sports and sense of sharing. These photographers target to the same purpose: to testify, tell, reveal, make us aware of what is happening in the world and help us understanding the complexity of the world. The section aims to highlight the different aspects that reportage has developed today. No longer just a testimony of terrible, unusual or extraordinary events but a powerful witness of a normal story, which happens in everyday life and which becomes unique. A contemporary reportage that goes beyond the traditional reportage and, considering the impact of images proliferation, enormously increases its importance as a visual medium. Every story, event or gesture becomes immortal, inviting us to remember that we must not forget.

Emanuela Mazzonis di Pralafera [ Independent Curator]

Based in Luxembourg and born in Rome, she graduated cum laude in Art History at La Sapienza, Rome and got a Master Degree in Art Management at Accademia di Brera, Milan. After a first experience in the world of art galleries, working for Francesca Kaufmann, Milan and Gavin Brown Enterprise, New York; she worked for the François Pinault Collection in Venice from 2003 to 2011. From 2012 she started working as freelance curator on different exhibition projects as Addio Anni ’70 in Palazzo Reale, Milan, 2012; The sea is my Land, Artists from the Mediterranean Sea at the Maxxi Museum in Rome and the Triennale in Milan, FRAC, Marseille 2013 -2015 – 2016; Year After Year – opere su carta dalla UBS Art Collection,GAM, Milan, 2014; Don’t shoot the painter – dipinti dalla UBS Art Collection, GAM, Milan, 2015; Me, Family at Mudam, Luxembourg, 2020. She has published essays in different publications as “Artists Interviews” for the Luxembourg Art Week, 2022; “Stronger than memory and weaker than dewdrops – Karolina Markiewicz and Pascal Piron”, exhibition cat., 2021; “Me, Family – Portrait of a Young Planet”, exhibition cat., DCV, 2020; “Don’t shoot the painter – dipinti dalla UBS Art Collection”, exhibition cat., Skira, 2015; “Year After Year – opere su carta della UBS Art Collection”, exhibition cat., UBS, 2014; “The sea is my land – artisti dal Mediterraneo”, exhibition cat., Feltrinelli, 2013; “Rudolf Stingel e Franz West” in M. Pugliese, B. Ferriani “Monumenti effimeri. Storia e conservazione delle installazioni”, Milano, Electa, 2009, pp. 243-255; Explanatory texts on the artists exhibited in “Italics”, exhibition cat., Venezia, Electa, 2008; Short biographical texts on the artists exhibited in “Sequence 1”, exhibition cat., Venezia, Skira, 2007; “The François Pinault Collection, A Post-Pop Selection”, exhibition cat., Venezia, Skira, 2006.

Following the death of  Mahsa Amini, the young Kurdish woman who died while in the custody of the morality police, history is being rewritten in Iran, not only that of the country but of the whole world. The protests and riots that have engulfed the country since September 2022 are destined to change global geopolitics forever: today the world has its eyes on Iran, on the delicate and unstable political situation and on the condition of women. Therefore, it is necessary to involve the world and the institutions of contemporary art and address this topic, today more than ever we need to create a strong exhibition, made up of stubborn and intimately political gazes: not only Iran needs it, but the whole world.

From these premises stemmed the Underskin, Stories from Iran project, which will debut during MIA Fair 2023

The project, curated by Rischa Paterlini, will present a selection of works by emerging and established Iranian artists, residing in Iran or abroad, and represented by galleries from different continents.

The selected photographs will investigate the beauty and inconsistencies that make up the inner fabric of the country, shedding a light on its social and systemic wounds. The aim is to enter the global cultural debate, so that social rights are never privileges. Thanks to the works of the artists it will be possible to create spaces engaged in relational plots, capable of nourishing development, active citizenship and sustainability, as well as cultivating an “ecology of the mind” starting from creativity, by its nature transversal and open to hybridizations, trespassing and contaminations between genres and languages.

There will also be moments dedicated to the performance and the screening of the short film “Power to the people”, by young Iranian artists.

A space of MIA Fair will then be dedicated to Sarah Doraghi, an Iranian artist, journalist and activist who has created a photographic series focused on the “forbidden” face of Iran, or that desire to break the generational schemes and the rigid cultural impositions dictated by laws in force in the country.

Underskin, Stories from Iran will also offer a series of collateral events that will be able to broaden the visitor’s experience, providing a deeper understanding of the themes and works on display. Among these, included in this new project, there will be two talks in which some Masterclasses will be held, with the presence of prominent personalities from the world of art and culture that will reflect on the current situation in Iran and the key role of art. The speakers include, among others, the Iranian visual artist Shirin Neshat, Bartolomeo Pietromarchi, director of MAXXI, the curator Ilaria Bernardi, the artist Sarah Doraghi and the collector Roberto Spada.

To accompany visitors during and after the exhibition there will be a podcast that will allow you to listen to the voices of the protagonists of the event; each episode will be dedicated to a different aspect of the exhibition and fair, offering diversified digital content.

At the end of this schedule, there will be the assignment of an acquisition prize dedicated to one of the works included in the project coming from either one of the Iranian galleries or that deals with the theme of civil rights.

The work selected for the award will then be acquired by the miramART collection by Grand Hotel Miramare.