WORKSHOP

The Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera presents Disorienting the Gaze, Rewriting the Minor Archive, an intensive educational workshop led by Nicola Lo Calzo, Visiting Scholar and Italian photographer, curator, and researcher (CY-ENSAPC).

Building on Nicola Lo Calzo’s doctoral research, Une photographie queer et marronne. Représenter les mémoires de l’esclavage à l’ère postcoloniale (CY Cergy Paris Université / École nationale supérieure d’arts de Paris-Cergy, 2025), the workshop mobilizes queer studies in order to develop a critical and denormative photographic practice. Its aim is to interrogate photography’s capacity to produce queer and denormative representations of the memories of subaltern groups and subjectivities, while also deconstructing the hegemonic imaginaries that shape them, thereby contributing to the construction of a minor archive.

The first day is structured around two distinct yet complementary case studies. Through an approach that intertwines aesthetics, ethics, and critical thought, the workshop presents fieldwork conducted in Brazil centered on the memorial practice of Nego Fugido. The exhibition of the same name is presented at the National Museum of the Republic in Brasília (2025) and subsequently at the Museu Afro-Brasileiro of the Federal University of Bahia in Salvador (2025–2026). Particular attention is devoted to the different stages involved in the development of the project, from research to production, from the use of archives to modes of dissemination.

The workshop then introduces the project Brigantinas, recently published by L’Artiere (2025), which, within a different geographical context marked by equally structural power relations, investigates the role of women in the (de)construction of Sardinian identity and memory. Particular attention is given to the reactivation and resignification of archival and museum collections as tools for a decolonial artistic practice.

The second day is devoted to the presentation and discussion of students’ work, building on the reflections developed during the workshop and the case studies introduced during the first day.

Visiting Scholar: Nicola Lo Calzo (Turin, 1979) is an Italian photographer, curator, and researcher (CY-ENSAPC). His work focuses on memory, identity, and marginality in postcolonial contexts. His long-term research explores the ways in which communities preserve or reactivate their cultural memory in the face of processes of marginalization and historical erasure. Since 2010, he has been developing Cham/Kam, a photographic investigation into the legacy of slavery and resistance across the Atlantic world, from West Africa to the Caribbean and the Americas. Lo Calzo’s work is grounded in a participatory and field-based research practice developed in collaboration with local communities, historians, and institutions. His work is exhibited internationally and published in outlets including The New York Times, The Guardian, The New Yorker, Le Monde, Libération, Internazionale, and National Geographic. Alongside his photographic practice, he is active in academic and curatorial contexts, articulating visual storytelling, colonial history, memory politics, and queer and decolonial thought.

Participants: The workshop is open to doctoral candidates as well as students currently enrolled in second-level academic diploma programs, master’s degree programs, and second-level master’s programs.

For information and registration: iartnet.ricerca@fadbrera.edu.it