Text by Silvia Colombo

The exhibition Northernness is a group show featuring photographic, digital, and video works connected by a common thread: the fascination with a vague “North,” understood both as a real geographic space and as an unreachable imaginary realm, closely linked to mythology, imagination, and fantasy. 
In the open call addressed to artists, a clear question was posed: What is “the North” to you, and how can it be represented or perceived through artistic practice?
The exhibition, hosted at the Roman space Millepiani, gathers responses to this question by turning its rooms into open windows on landscapes and environments that are ever-changing and diverse.

.
Some works take on a more documentary character, aiming to record the life of a place in a specific historical moment. Interestingly, the imaginary tied to “northernness” seems almost inevitably associated with a cold visuality: wintry, silent landscapes blanketed in snow, captured in seasons with dim light and muted colors. Very few of the exhibited images choose to depict the North in other times of the year. 

It is also worth noting that the North depicted in this exhibition is not only filtered through the gaze of outsiders – those who often approach it with fresh eyes, but also with a tendency to exoticize it – but also through the perspective of those who come from these places or have lived there extensively, and thus experience it in a deeper, more layered way.
A recurring theme in the works presented is the almost constant presence of absence. Absence of people, and often of animals. As if these places were uninhabited, suspended in time. While it is true that population density in these regions is lower than in urban areas, even the smallest and most remote villages host communities of people who have chosen to live, work, and spend their time in these environments.

A special mention within the exhibition goes to the photographic series by Alessandro Cristofoletti (Bolzano, 1983), produced during a six-week artist residency between Luleå and Kiruna, two cities in Norrbotten – the northernmost and largest region of Sweden, located above the Arctic Circle.
The residency, promoted and funded by Region Norrbotten in collaboration with Loosenart, aimed to invite an artist/photographer to connect with the territory and observe it with fresh eyes. The selected images on view focus on the mining town of Kiruna, which is currently being relocated several kilometers away due to ground collapse caused by iron ore extraction.