This year the fair will celebrates the theme of change showing the challenges that the world is facing.
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This year MIA Photo Fair, the international art fair dedicated to photography in Milan will be conjunct to miart 2024. In fact, this year the fair changes its location, moving to the new headquarters of Allianz MiCo (Via Gattamelata 13), same location as miart. The photo fair celebrates photography collectors and Italian cultural institutions. MIA will take place from the 11th to the 14th of April, showcasing more than 100 exhibitors, 8 exhibitions and special projects and 4 prizes. It encompasses 70 galleries in total from both the main and the special sections. This year, the fair is under the artistic direction of Francesca Malgara, having “Changing” as the theme of the exhibition. Changing, addresses problems as climate change, the social transformation, ranging from civil rights to technological advancements and economic fluctuations.
The visual campaign of the fair is represented through a graphic concept. It is realized using the juxtaposition of filters made by a 3D camera. It creates an alteration of the world MIA, representing our way of understanding and reinterpreting our constantly changing world. The project was developed by Alessandro Prepi Sot e Dario Pianesi di Hapto Studio a Milano, exploring the theme Changing, proposed by the new artistic director Francesca Malgara. Through different perspectives and interpretations a visual identity recalling the 70ies is created capturing the theme of MIA Photo fair.
“Changing” explains the new artistic director Francesca Malgara, “it means to create with courage. An alternative to the crisis that, during our times, touched the personal, political and economic sphere as well. My desire is that gallerists build their stand as real exhibitions able to activate change. They need to concentrate on the integrity of a person, the respect for the environment and biodiversity, on the responsibility of the individuals, the feminine valorisations and the dialogue between the sides and the community’s strengths." Malgara continues: “changing is at the heart of everyone and MIA is an environment full of takeaways from where to start. The fair is a place where art and awareness will be market activators, but also value activators, alongside the people who are willing to change towards a better future”.
Ilaria Dazzi, director and brand managers adds: “This MIA edition will deal with the big questions of contemporaneity, through pluralistic and inclusive narrations, explaining change. A place of meetings and contaminations, where the most important photography collections from private and cultural Italian institutions and collectors meet. An ever more international fair, aiming to become a laboratory for thoughts and cultures”. Photography is a powerful instrument of narration, which allows us to tell the crisis our world is facing. The fair is aiming to provide an environment where to think and reimagine the future through photography.
“La forma delle relazioni”, (the forms of relationship) is the title of the exhibition part of MIA dedicated to the big collectionists of the Italian photography fair. Curated by the journalist and writer Rica Cerbano and set up by the Studio of Architecture Lissoni & Partners, the exhibition presents a selection of 50 artworks coming from the most prominent Italian collections. It underlines the relationship between the artist and the subjects of the images. To name some of them, Ettore Sottsass, Efrem Raimondi, Leigh Ledare, Nan Goldin, Lisetta Carmi, Muholi, Catherine Opie, Ugo Mulas, Robert Mapplethorpe, Man Ray, Jacopo Benassi e Jason Schmidt, but also due and collectives such as Bernd & Hilla Becher, Rong Rong & Inri, the italians Jean Marc Caimi & Valentina Piccinni e The Cool Couple, and artists which works are the result of an active participation of the photographed subjects, such as JR, Vanessa Beecroft, Patrick Willocq, Maurizio Cattelan, Franco Vaccari. This exhibition shows that the photography collections are active and alive in our country as well.
Another change of this new edition is the section reserved to the cultural institutions and foundations, in which CSAC - the center of studies and archive of communication of the University of Parma, and the contemporary Museum of Photography MuFoCo, Deloitte Foundation and Sella Foundation are part of it.
Cover image: MIA Photo Fair 2023. Courtesy of MIA Photo Fair
Written by Asia Artom
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