{"id":28827,"date":"2025-10-01T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-10-01T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/areademo.beculture.it\/?p=28827"},"modified":"2025-09-25T09:26:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-25T07:26:09","slug":"francesco-jodice-orbital-cultura-award-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/areademo.beculture.it\/en\/francesco-jodice-orbital-cultura-award-interview\/","title":{"rendered":"Francesco Jodice for the Gallerie degli Uffizi: interview with the winner of the Orbital Cultura Award 2023"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cThe photographs are deliberately meant to allude, with a touch of irony, to a postcard-like dimension as a defence mechanism against the erosion imposed by globalisation.\u201d This is how Francesco Jodice<\/strong>, an internationally renowned artist, comments on the snapshots taken in 2023, when he won the Orbital Cultura <\/strong><\/a>Award and had the opportunity to capture some of Florence\u2019s most important heritage museums.
We met him to learn more about this experience and his artistic vision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Orbital Cultura Award and Jodice\u2019s encounter with Florentine museums<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Born in Naples in 1967, Francesco Jodice graduated in architecture and now lives in Milan. At the heart of his research lies the relationship between cities and communities, geopolitics, and the new phenomena of megapolitics. Interests that he develops through a multifaceted practice spanning photography, video and installations. The very purpose of the Orbital Cultura Award is the commission of a photographic project \u2013 with an award of \u20ac10,000<\/strong> \u2013 in collaboration with miart, the International Modern and Contemporary Art Fair. Its aim is to provide Italy\u2019s historic museums with contemporary, high-quality images<\/strong>, fostering an ongoing exchange of perspectives between past and present. The edition inaugurated by Jodice (represented by the galleria Umberto di Marino) was dedicated to the Gallerie degli Uffizi<\/a>, comprising the museo degli Uffizi, Palazzo Pitti, the Giardino di Boboli<\/a> and the Corridoio Vasariano<\/a> .<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"francesco
Uffizi, Francesco Jodice, courtesy Orbital Cultura<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI tried to free<\/em> four totemic places of the city from the convulsions and wear of daily life,\u201d Jodice declared at the award ceremony. \u201cI sought to take these spaces out of their contingent time, releasing them from the obligation to participate in the ritual of mass tourism.\u201d
This unprecedented interpretation<\/strong> \u2013 as often in his work \u2013 managed to reconcile the needs of the commission, adopting the documentary objectives of the Award while combining them with personal artistic intentions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"francesco
Corridoio Vasariano, Francesco Jodice, courtesy Orbital Cultura<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The project and the dialogue with the \u201cgiants\u201d of Italian culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Urban landscape is a recurring theme in Jodice\u2019s work, and it is not the first time he has engaged with leading museum institutions. One need only think of his 2012 project Prado. Spectaculum Spectatoris<\/em>: a photographic investigation into the relationship between viewers and works of art. Yet approaching historical, iconic and visually overexposed buildings such as the Florentine museums and offering a personal vision of them is no simple challenge<\/strong>. \u201cI approached these totemic monuments of Florentine history and art history not as architectures, but as bearers of legacies that are traversed every year by millions of travellers, often insufficiently equipped to grasp their depth and stratification,\u201d he explains. \u201cI attempted to convey a schizophrenic sentiment<\/strong>: cultural artefacts coming from the distant past but animated by the urgency of repositioning themselves every time history moves forward.\u201d
A short circuit, then, between a cumbersome past and a present eager to assert itself without losing its heritage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"galleria
Uffizi, Francesco Jodice, courtesy Orbital Cultura<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The risk, however, according to Jodice, is becoming prisoners of an outdated identity<\/strong>, crushed by the consumerist frenzy of modern travellers. \u201cThe administrations responsible for managing the narrative of Italy\u2019s immense artistic, architectural and landscape heritage are often burdened with the need to confirm an image of this heritage frozen in time,<\/strong> as sometimes it is thought dangerous to turn the page and set a new, alternative narrative.\u201d Thus, the constant need to sustain historical and cultural greatness becomes an obstacle to the true expressive power of what museums and galleries strive to highlight.
A paradox, especially considering that \u201cmasterpieces are timeless and eternalised: they do not follow fashions or customs but renew themselves and constantly possess the authority to produce new meanings in relation to the changing times.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"giardino
Giardino di Boboli, Francesco Jodice, courtesy Orbital Cultura<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this, Florence is both a master and a poor example. According to the artist, it is a marvellous city endowed with a millenary history, yet compromised by a corrupted image. \u201cA tiny city that you could cross in a day and yet a lifetime would not be enough to comprehend its history<\/strong>.\u201d And he continues: \u201cFlorence and its monuments, its art, its storytellers and its histories make me think of Walt Whitman and the verse of his poem: \u201cI contain multitudes.\u201d
But how then to approach such multiplicity, rich in both fascination and contradictions<\/strong>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"giardino
Giardino di Boboli, Francesco Jodice, courtesy Orbital Cultura<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t believe in archives, warehouses, or image repositories\u201d<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

At this point, we ask Jodice how, in practical terms, he carried out his work for the Orbital Cultura Award and how he managed to achieve that effect of suspension<\/strong>, beyond time and space, that emanates from his photographs. \u201cI am a cold artist in procedure and a poor fl\u00e2neur<\/em>,\u201d he confesses. \u201cMost of the time is spent defining the meaning I want to attribute to works and projects. Once this methodological aspect is clarified, the executive part is very simple: it is about giving visible form to the idea.\u201d
Once the conceptual line is set, he moves on to practice, which always takes place in a measured manner: Francesco does not believe in accumulation but rather in the pinpoint precision of a single essential work<\/strong>. \u201cI am also very sparing when it comes to the need to produce further unnecessary images or photographs. I prefer to spend several days creating a single photograph, perhaps through micrometric corrections, rather than taking many images to review later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"palazzo
Palazzo Pitti, Francesco Jodice, courtesy Orbital Cultura<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A way of working consistent with his way of thinking and reading the present time, especially in terms of consumption. \u201cIn general, I believe there is an acceleration of enjoyment,\u201d he reflects. \u201cIt seems to me that tourism has become a kind of performance: to go to as many places as possible and try to see everything that we are dogmatically told is essential. We should relearn to travel as something slow and ruminative<\/strong>, unsystematic and askew, to observe in a colour-blind<\/em> way compared to the dominant gaze.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n