Upcoming exhibition: Violent Images – Broomberg & Chanarin, Eva Leitolf, Letizia Nicolini, Sophia Rabbiosi, Viola Silvi

Opening: 4.10.2025, 6 p.m.
Exhibition: 7.10. – 8.11.2025
Book launch: 28.10.25, 6 p.m.
Curated by Eva Leitolf and Giulia Cordin
In collaboration with unibz, Studio Image, A/POLITICAL, BAW

The exhibition Violent Images examines pressing aspects and implications of the visual representation of violence. Violent images are part of our lives and shape how we perceive the world. They may directly represent violence, or their violent potential may be revealed in connection with their production, dissemination or use. Many questions arise: Where does the violence in and of the image begin? What makes an image violent? Who decides this, and in what context? How do production technologies and distribution channels influence the relationship between image and (the exercise of) violence? And how do artists deal with the issue of violence and the violent potential of image technologies?
The works in the exhibition Violent Images explore subtle rather than explicit forms of visual violence and their contexts, aiming to examine their cultural, social, and political impact. They resist immediate readability and full visibility, avoiding the risk of spectacularizing suffering or marginality. In different ways, they act as a counter-image—intentionally leaving productive gaps in visual narratives. They interrupt the often assumed neutrality of seeing, activating a space for doubt, thought, and the responsibility of looking. All the contributors critically examine both established and emerging visual concepts of violence, suggesting that our engagement with them is inherently political and more pressing than ever.

Broomberg & Chanarin
Chopped Liver Press, 2019
Posters, screen-printed on newspaper, 56 × 35 cm

Chopped Liver Press was founded by artists Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin to publish limited edition books and posters. The posters in this exhibition are made from selected pages of the International New York Times and were hand-printed by Broomberg & Chanarin in their London studio. Each quote appears on 100 different sheets of newspaper, forming an edition of 100 unique works.
The exhibition presents a curated selection of posters from various series. Each features a distinct quote, tracing a timeline of influences and ideas that have shaped the artists’ thinking. Through the juxtaposition of enduring quotations and ephemeral news headlines, the works explore the tension between ideals and everyday realities.

Eva Leitolf

Postcards from Europe: Work from the ongoing archive, since 2006
Archival pigment prints on boards, 68.6 x 83.5 cm, shelf, postcards

In Postcards from Europe Eva Leitolf examines the ways the European Union deals with its external borders and the associated internal conflicts, by bringing together images of places with carefully researched texts about past migration-related events at those places. The project does not focus on the suffering of those involved, which has already been widely documented, but on the ways the European Community relates to that suffering, administers undocumented migrants, and works to tighten control of its external borders. The text postcards that accompany each image draw on many different sources, like media reports, police files and press releases. These materials usually constitute the starting point for Eva Leitolf’s research and shape her fieldwork itineraries. While travelling she keeps a journal, and on site she speaks with people connected to the events: migrants, refugees, seasonal workers, activists, trade unionists, local politicians, border guards. Later, these collected voices and sources come together to form the basis of the postcard texts.

Letizia Nicolini

Unmarked, 2025
Video with AI-generated images and audio description

Unmarked is conceived as a series of AI-generated images, each presented with its upload date and an AI-generated audio description, played sequentially in a loop. The images are screenshots of visual representations, published on social media profiles of the sitting U.S. President and identified by the artist as AI-generated. The artist deliberately collected each image, noting that neither Meta nor the administrators of his account had labeled them as AI-generated.
 
Sophia Rabbiosi

Immagini di repertorio, 2018
Inkjet prints, 65 x 93 cm
Publication, 94 pages, 21 x 26 cm

Immagini di repertorio analyses the use of one stock image by a range of diverse news channels. Echoing the way an image is used and reused to illustrate different events, the image has been repeatedly printed and scanned until the subject as well as any potential message, has become almost unrecognizable: it has been consumed.

Viola Silvi
Crossing These Times, 2025
Cross-stitch on fabric, each 24.0 × 19.5 cm

Over the course of five months, ten selected online news stories were given physical form through the practice of cross-stitching. This ancient practice composes images by creating about 3 mm X-shaped stitches on fabric by hand with a threaded needle. This detailed succession of individual stitches requires a considerable amount of time to complete the representation of the whole subject chosen. Because of the slowness of this procedure, copying the headlines and images of the constantly updating and volatile news means embarking in an impossible task, leading to a series of pieces inevitably being left incomplete.
The methodical work of cross-stitching questions the experience of reading the news every day and seeing it constantly change. The way many events occur simultaneously leaves the sense that many unresolved issues are left behind, and that the only option is to just move one’s attention down the line.