“The Silk Road: Contemporary Art and Artists from Italy” is the title of an exhibition of contemporary art that will be inaugurated in Tashkent tomorrow, 15 December, at the Fine Arts Gallery of Uzbekistan-NBU, one of the most prestigious museums in Uzbekistan.
Agostino Pinna, Ambassador of Italy to Tashkent, stated: “The Silk Road offers a concise overview of contemporary Italian art from the late 1960s to the present day and is the first exhibition of its kind in the recent history of cultural relations between Italy and Uzbekistan. Its itinerary could not but include this important Central Asian country, which has always been a crossroads of civilisations since ancient times”.
The exhibition is a Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation project collaborating with the Garuzzo Institute for Visual Arts (IGAV) and the NBU Gallery in Tashkent.
The exhibition is dedicated to the vitality that has been a feature of Italian artistic expressions in recent history. It includes thirty-eight works of high value, including eight pieces belonging to the Farnesina Collection on display in Rome at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The exhibition ideally retraces the ancient caravan routes of the Silk Road. It passes through Kiev, Ankara, Tbilisi, and Tashkent before reaching China – Beijing, Chongqing, Xian – in 2022, joining the Year of Culture and Tourism celebrations of Italy-China. A journey of thirty thousand kilometres that, as in the past, joins East and West, sharing their respective excellences and sensibilities.
The works presented use painting, photography, sculpture, textiles, video and various installations to confront the three themes of the exhibition: travel, meetings and exchanges, and discovery.
Curators of the exhibition are Angela Tecce (Madre Museum in Naples) and Alessandro Carrer (Garuzzo Institute), who have brought together the works of well-known artists and young newcomers. These include Carla Accardi, Marisa Albanese, Yuri Ancarani, Enrico Baj, Gabriele Basilico, Flavio Favelli, Eugenio Giliberti, Paolo Maria Lai, Luigi Mainolfi, Domenico Antonio Mancini, Sabrina Mezzaqui, Marzia Migliora, Nino Migliori, Nunzio and Fabio Viale.
