Artists
Francesca
Matta
Beirut, 1994
Francesca Matta (Beirut 1994) is a visual artist currently based between Lebanon and Italy. She graduated from Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti with a master’s degree in Photography and Visual Design. Through her work, Matta uses photography to explore the fragility of time, reconstructing memories through images, words, and archives, weaving an ode to fleeting moments.
Her work has been featured in publications such as Vogue, Cosmopolitan Italia, Purple Fashion Magazine, Musée Magazine, Somewhere Magazine and many more. She is the artist selected for the 2023–2024 residency program promoted by Imago+.
Francesca has chosen to develop a visual investigation into the transformations that have affected the Libertà district since the post–World War II era. Libertà district, where Imago+ is based, has 90,000 registered residents and is the largest and most populous district in the city of Bari.
A neighborhood whose distinguishing feature is its perpetual state of change. Initially a rural suburb, it later became an informal residential area for farming families moving to the city due to the presence of industrial plants such as the tobacco factory, the oil mill, and the steel mill, closely linked to the commercial port.
Following the collapse of local industry, the area went through a period of significant decline and abandonment. Its conversion into a commercial district then ushered in a twenty-year phase of redevelopment, which was ultimately disrupted by the globalization and digitalization of retail trade.
Now, the neighborhood is at the center of a public and private transformation program aimed at turning it into a research hub with advanced tertiary services and facilities for the resident student population.
This future, although already set in motion, is not yet visible amid the traces of past eras.
In an effort to explore and visually narrate the “genetliac” quality of this part of the city—its inherent unpredictability and constant metamorphosis—Francesca Matta is conducting a visual research project.
To that end, she has investigated the places, characters, and stories recounted by Vito Maurogiovanni, an Italian journalist, writer, and screenwriter born in Bari in 1924. More than anyone else, Vito Maurogiovanni strove tirelessly to define the identity of this neighborhood—truly a city within the city, marginalized and kaleidoscopic, complex and hard to interpret in its ongoing evolution.
What emerges is an attempt to depict the present as the trace of an absence.
The book compiling Francesca Matta’s research will be published by June 2025, marking the first volume in the monographic series linked to the artist-in-residence program promoted by Imago+ and published by Imago Publishing.
