The Sowing Archives program opens on 1 October at 7 p.m. with a performance by Italian-Eritrean artist Muna Mussie. The artist’s years-long archival, oral and performance-based research into the Eritrean Congress and Festivals that took place in Bologna, Italy, between 1972 and 1991 as part of the nation’s struggle for independence from Ethiopia culminated in the exhibition, Bologna St.173, Un viaggio a ritroso (2023) at MAMbo in Bologna. Mussie will revisit the project through a new performance and the screening of Uroboro (2024), a new video that documents a propitious collective rite. The work will act as the backdrop for Mussie as she performs solo with the help of some props including a series of netzela, traditional textiles belonging to Eritrean culture which are, to the artist, the material representations of home-making elsewhere. Through the activation of pre-existing rituals and the materialization of new ones associated with the forgotten history of the Bologna congress and festivals, Mussie is able to evoke, elaborate and mythologize this history through its sensory, material, and document-based traces.   

The Italian Cultural Institute of Barcelona presents the second edition of IT Out OFF, a program conceived by the Directorate General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture in collaboration with the Directorate General for Public and Cultural Diplomacy of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, for the internationalization of Italian art.

The 2024 edition features Sowing Archives, a public program conceived and curated by Sara Alberani and Chiara Siravo of the Rome based collective LOCALES, is presented at La Virreina Centre de la Imatge, a contemporary art space run by the Barcelona City Council. The title of the programme refers to the importance of the archive as a visual, imaginative and knowledge-building medium within marginalized and invisibilized contexts. The project is based on the belief that artistic practices have the capacity to locate and gather traces of the past and plant the necessary seeds for the recognition of histories and experiences whose memory is at risk of being lost. Just as there are potential histories, there are also potential archives that can take root through the sowing and irrigation of their subterranean substances, which often only appear to be hidden

Through the work of the international artists involved in the programme, Adelita Husni Bey, Muna Mussie and Daniela Ortiz, Sowing Archives recognizes and celebrates the importance of counter-narratives, particularly in the context of Europe’s colonial past. The project initiates a dialogue between Italy and Spain, where multiple artistic practices are searching for and bringing to light a critical perspective towards the persistent aesthetic and ideological reverberations of colonialism, also through alternative pedagogy geared towards reformulating collective memory.

Composed of performances, video projections, workshops and a series of editorial releases, Sowing Archives consists of three main events hosted by La Virreina Centre de la Imatge in Barcelona from 1 October to the end of November 2024.

Sowing Archives is a public programme conceived and curated by Sara Alberani and Chiara Siravo (LOCALES) and promoted by the Directorate General for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture and by the Italian Cultural Institute of Barcelona in conjunction with the 15th edition of Manifesta. 

The project is supported by La Virreina Centre de la Imatge, àngels Barcelona, Laveronica Arte Contemporanea, and with the collaboration of Calafou and Nero Editions.

LOCALES is a curatorial platform founded in Rome that aims to inspire a reflection on the public sphere through artistic practices. It is directed and curated by Sara Alberani, Marta Federici and Chiara Siravo. Through a series of site-specific programmes involving commissions of new artworks, explorations of public spaces, educational activities and performances, LOCALES addresses the complexity of contemporary urgencies starting from the political and social history of symbolic places in the city and their local communities. 

The LOCALES team that is active in the Sowing Archives project is composed of Sara Alberani, Chiara Siravo (curators), Chiara Pagano (curator of narratives), Giulia Caruso (project manager) and Alice Albanese Ginammi (intern).

Muna Mussie is an Eritrean artist based in Bologna who investigates the performing arts and scenic languages to give shape to the tensions that arise between these different expressive poles through gesture, visuality and words. She began her artistic career in 1998 an as actress/performer with Teatrino Clandestino. In 2002 she attended the European advanced training course for actors led by Cesare Ronconi of the Valdoca Theatre and continued to work as an actress until 2012. From 2001 to 2005 she was active in the research collective Open, which spurred her desire to investigate her own forms of expression. Since 2006, she has conceived, staged and interpreted her own works. Her work has been presented at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin, the Museo Marino Marini in Florence, Workspacebrussels, MAMbo in Bologna, the Santarcangelo Festival, Museion in Bolzano, ERT in Bologna, Rue d’Alger Manifesta 13 Marseilles, the Short Theatre in Rome, Savvy Contemporary in Berlin, the Democracy Biennial in Turin, Artefiera in Bologna, HangarBicocca in Milan, Mattatoio in Rome, Sesc São Paulo, the Kunstencentrum BUDA in Kortrijk, SZENE in Salzburg, Centrale Fies in Dro, the Black History Month in Florence, Spazio Griot in Rome, the Villa Romana in Florence, Mucem in Marseille, MAXXI in L’Aquila, OGR in Turin, Lavanderia a Vapore in Turin and the Musei Reali in Turin.