The theme chosen for the 2026 edition of AMACI is “Geographies of Contemporaneity.”
The Italian Cultural Institute in Dublin is taking part by bringing into dialogue the artistic practices of Rebecca Moccia in Dublin and Déirdre Kelly in Venice.
Rebecca Moccia, an Italian artist based in Milan, presented Nostalgism in Dublin this year at Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, integrating into the gallery’s architecture forms and colours drawn from a geological map of the crater of Mount Vesuvius and the 1944 lava flow. Her fluid forms occupy a state of “hauntology,” suspended somewhere between collapse and reconstruction, reflecting the reality of an undefined and involuntary emotional, social, and cultural upheaval.
Of Irish origin, Déirdre Kelly has been the resident artist at the Scuola Internazionale di Grafica in Venice since 2002. Her practice explores the language and aesthetics of cartography, using maps both as physical objects and as metaphors for memory, place, journeys, and human relationships.
Since becoming a member of the Ballinglen Visual Arts Foundation in 2012, Kelly has developed a close connection with the Atlantic coast of North Mayo. Its distinctive landscape and geography, together with the writings of Manchán Magan, continue to inspire her work.
Geographies in Relation aims to reflect on the present as a space shaped by continuous transformation, in which territories, communities, and identities are defined through relationships, conflicts, exchanges, and ongoing processes of redefinition.
Video credits: Rebecca Moccia, Temple Bar Gallery+ Studios.
To follow the event via the Institute’s YouTube channel, please connect to the following link: www.youtube.com/@istitutoitalianodicultura-7604.