Photo by Polly Penrose
From the 23rd to the 26th of November 2016 the space of Via Circo 1 in Milan will host Perceptive Variations, the second photographic exhibition by THIS IS ME NOT BEING YOU – TIMNBY project, curated by Micaela Flenda, production by The Candy Box, in collaboration with Studio Modulo and Graficartiere.
The show-case hosts the works of 8 international photographers: Linda Brownlee, Cristina Coral, Can Dagarlsani, Parker Day, Polly Penrose, Katrin Olafs, Jill Schweber and Camille Rouzaud.
The theme on which the exhibition focuses is the relationship between identity and physicality. In front of the multiplicity of existence, we cannot help but ask ourselves an important question: what does “I” mean today? Merleau-Ponty believed that the sense of subjectivity originated from the perception of the body and recognition of identity passed through what we feel, and more specifically through what we perceive: the body has a role as a bridge between consciousness and reality, and generates an incredible kaleidoscope of experiences through which an individual has the opportunity to learn about their surroundings and recognize himself.
Photo by Parker Day
The perception in the body’s experience thus becomes a place of affirmation of a primordial identity, flesh of the world, prior to any racial, sexual, cultural or social issue. Through a phenomenological approach every photographer analyzes which are the different levels of perception of the body and what kind of experience the body lives in symbiosis with the surrounding reality, in order to understand how this defines and expresses the most general meaning of identity.
Photo by Katrin Olafs
Following the inauguration of its first exhibition activity in February 2016 during the Milan fashion week, and having investigated the facets of young contemporary fashion photography, today TIMNBY is launching a new challenge: in an era of post-race, post-gender, post- human and post-identity, perhaps we are experiencing a post-fashion era in which fashion itself becomes a fertile ground for a more personal and intimate creative expression? As affirmed by Simmel, if fashion has taken on a dominant role during the modern era condensending itself as “psychological trait of our time”, then the ineluctable desire of change and the charm of innovation brought fashion to become a value judgment. In the contemporary world, technology and social media have created new beings, bodies, icons, fictitious gods, which hold an esoteric demand for a collective identification. A fierce desire of identity is back with urgency. What if we had only our own body in order to rewrite the rules of a new identity paradigm?
