The group exhibition Con lo zucchero in bocca, curated by Lucrezia Calabrò Visconti, explores the relationship between resource extraction and sweetness. The project is inspired by the villa that now hosts the Istituto Svizzero in Rome, once owned by Carolina Maraini-Sommaruga and Emilio Maraini, a Ticinese pioneer in the beet sugar industry. Taking sugar and the history of its production as a starting point, the exhibition addresses the imagery associated with the exploitation of resources, exposing how notions of sweetness, romanticism and desire often contribute to sweetening narratives of domestication and conquest.
The exhibition presents works by Gianfranco Baruchello, Binta Diaw, Gina Fischli, Pauline Julier, Oz Oderbolz, Sergio Rojas Chaves, Virginie Sistek, and Milva Stutz, who confront the construction of the concept of nature, revealing the narrative strategies that conceal the exploitation of animals, resources, lands and communities, breaking free from the naive, escapist and conciliatory gaze that often characterises them.
The title of the exhibition evokes the feeling of sugar in the mouth, emphasising the embodiment of grand narratives through personal stories. Ranging from the microscopic to the macroscopic – from something as small as sugar dust to something as vast as a galaxy – the works in the exhibition subvert expectations of ecological discourse, offering new and urgent forms of narrative.