WIZARD LAB & WIZARD GALLERY invite you to the talk and screening:
The invention of the desert: memories of colonialism in “FIAT 633NM”
With Eleonora Roaro, artist, and Andrea Mariani, professor of Cinema, photography and television at the University of Udine.
WIZARD GALLERY
Via Aurelio Saffi 6, 1st floor, 20123 Milan
Thursday, 20th March, 7:00 pm
WIZARD LAB presents a dialogue between Eleonora Roaro and Andrea Mariani on their respective projects which examine the colonial imagery from the fascist era in Ethiopia and Eritrea during the 1930s. The discussion will focus particularly on the historical-critical publication created for the exhibition at the Museo Diffuso della Resistenza, della Deportazione, della Guerra, dei Diritti e della Libertà in Turin, Scenografie coloniali: FIAT 633NM by Eleonora Roaro (Prinp, 2022), curated by Enrico Manera, Roberto Mastroianni, and Chiara Miranda.
This conversation aims to deconstruct the myth of modernity through two emblematic yet opposing elements: the desert, perceived as an uncolonised and untamed space, and the means of transport, symbolising progress and control. In her audio-video installation FIAT 633NM (2021), Eleonora Roaro presents the FIAT truck as an icon of fascist rhetoric, emphasising infrastructure, conquest, and the drive to dominate both time and the unknown. Within this framework, the desert emerges as a cultural construct—an ideological space designed to justify colonial oppression and domination.
Andrea Mariani, author of L’audacissimo viaggio: I media, il deserto e il cinema nella microstoria della spedizione Tripoli-Addis Ababa 1937 (Mimesis, 2017), similarly explores how the automobile, rather than a tool of mastery, ultimately exposes its own limitations in the attempt to control the territory. Through their exchange, Roaro and Mariani will address the role of the media and propaganda in shaping these narratives while also considering the potential for their deconstruction
The event will be hosted in the spaces of WIZARD GALLERY in via Aurelio Saffi 6, 1st floor, Milan.
Eleonora Roaro’s work FIAT 633NM (2021) is part of the collection of the CAMeC Museum (La Spezia, IT), and will be screened during the event.
She is a winner of the public call “Cantica21. Italian Contemporary Art Everywhere” – Under 35 section promoted by MAECI-DGSP and MiC-DGCC.