Atelier dell'Errore | Uomini come cibo (Humans as food)
Animals that feed exclusively off men…
Never seen, never heard, never told.
Max Mara, in partnership with Maramotti Collection, presents Uomini come Cibo – Humans as Food, an exhibition of forty works by the children of the Atelier dell’Errore, a visual arts laboratory created as a compendium for the clinical activities of the Reggio Emilia children's neuropsychiatry department.
Upturning the perspective of the theme of Expo Milano 2015, the works focus on the central issue of a fantastic bestiary of creatures that feed off men.
With this visionary view of men, from dominant beings they become consumer objects, while the animals become devourers, incarnating the fears of the children who drew them, taking on a salvific function, becoming a projective defence mechanism for their fragility in their relations with the real world.
Improving social well-being, from the state of siege in which these young artists often find themselves, begins with exorcising fear, allowing powerful, highly imaginative zoomorphic creatures to come to the fore and become their protectors and avengers. The drawings on display in Via Monte di Pietà act like clandestine occupants, their presence disseminated randomly over the five floors of the building apparently in a state of abandonment. Most of them are large drawings covering several sheets, joined together with sticky tape. Their presence is underlined by the scrap wood boxes used to highlight them. Visitors are invited on a journey that runs from underground tunnels, through the sea and the earth as far as the sky, in a stratification that re-establishes an apparent biological order among the different fantastic species. The thrilling imaginary journey proposed provokes different personal projections for every visitor.
During the exhibition, a shopping bag created by Max Mara using the drawings of the Atelier is on sale at the Max Mara Group stores in Milan, and all proceeds will go to the Atelier.