30.10.2025 \\
The exhibition Opere su carta, Ephemera e Oltre. In più atti, conceived by Fondazione Morra Greco as a project that is never static, presents its second act: El mapa de los autores perdidos (The Map of Lost Authors). This new exhibition has been curated by a group of young people from the Intercultural Center Officine Gomitoli of Cooperativa Dedalus, as the outcome of a participatory curatorial workshop held over several sessions. Through this process, the participants explored the deep and collective meaning of “curating” an exhibition.
This collaboration is part of the Fondazione’s ongoing commitment to developing a dynamic and ever-evolving exhibition path, inspired by the Surrealist game cadavre exquis. The Dedalus project emerged precisely from this workshop experience, which engaged the young participants in a profound act of “re-curation,” starting from the works already on display. Each “act” becomes a new discovery, a new point of view, resulting from a mediation program carried out in close collaboration with the Foundation’s departments.
Through encounters, dialogues, explorations, and mapping games, the young curators deconstructed and reassembled the original exhibition, giving life to a new show and an unprecedented narrative. The choice of a Spanish title reflects the mother tongue of many of the participants.
The Map of Feeling and the Artwork as Refuge
At the heart of their artistic exploration lies Untitled (Mappamondo) (2003) by Roberto Cuoghi, a drawing that denies the geographic function of a globe, depicting a world with no recognizable borders. El mapa de los autores perdidos is not a geographical map but the map of an inner territory – the diary of a journey made of losses and rediscoveries, where each artwork becomes both a compass and a memory to navigate one’s inner self.
As expressed by Andrea Nicole Hernandez Medrana, one of the young curators: “After losing ourselves among paintings, canvases, and exhibitions, we found the same path that these artists took to reach the sublime of their imagination.”
The curatorial vocabulary developed by the group is built on an emotional lexicon – humor, laughter, sadness, dream, memory, love, curiosity – a language of feelings that becomes the key to interpreting the exhibition journey.
For the young curators, the artist is someone who “takes refuge in their creations to speak to the world,” finding in them a path to understanding both themselves and reality. The artwork thus becomes both a mirror and a map – a space where contrasting emotions, from pain to joy, frustration to compassion, coexist and transform.
Drawing as Memory
In this “Second Act”, drawing and paper assume a fundamental role as tools for capturing the intangible. Every mark traced on paper is perceived as an act of memory.
An example is the reinterpretation of Portrait in Lila (2005) by Paloma Varga Weisz, in which the young curators see the artist observing herself through a face yet to be formed. This gesture, they suggest, expresses the constant tension between one’s present identity and the self one aspires to become.
El mapa de los autores perdidos is a space where the exhibition transcends its static form to become a continuous process of discovery – a model of how audiences can actively participate in creating new and unexpected curatorial narratives.
Project co-financed under FSC 2021/2027 resources, DGR 616 2024. Piano Strategico Cultura e Turismo 2024/2025 – Progetto Global Forum Mostre d’arte contemporanea EDI 2025.
Photos by Amedeo Benestante, Courtesy Fondazione Morra Greco