Italian
Piazza Duomo 20 Treviso
The new exhibition of Fondazione Imago Mundi at the Galleria delle Prigioni is open until August 2nd: Lines, Loops, Leaks. Contemporary Reflections on the Border.
The exhibition just inaugurated at the Galleria delle Prigioni is dedicated to the theme of borders: it will be open until Sunday, August 2, 2026, and proposes, through the language and sensitivity of contemporary art, a critical reflection on the current forms of borders, explored by artists as a tool of power that establishes hierarchies, produces identities, but also as a living space, where forms of exclusion, resistance, and creativity simultaneously manifest.
The title Lines, Loops, Leaks evokes lines, sequence, transgression, opening up a vision that gives us a broad concept of boundary as a threshold, as a space where “facts are defined and things happen.”
The theme of the border is the fluid and dynamic backdrop of the exhibition, but it also becomes a “borderscape,” a blend of border and landscape, serving as a method and tool for investigating the present, a key to understanding the reality that surrounds us, and an approach to analyze and think about the effects and consequences on the lives of people, cities, and nations.
The exhibition begins with a selection of 36 works from the Imago Mundi Collection that represent physical, geographical, symbolic, and even mental boundaries. It consists of three main sections and involves sixteen artists: Matteo Attruia, Filippo Berta, Nicolas Brunetti, Mario Ceroli, Peter Fend, Shilpa Gupta, Reena Saini Kallat, Armin Linke, Eva Marisaldi, Malgorzata Mirga-Tas, Adrien Missika, Ryts Monet, Antoni Muntadas, Paulo Nazareth, Liv Schulman, Riccardo Vicentini.
The first section aims to visualize borders, showing how they materialize both as political-physical and symbolic devices, as well as elements that concretely impact the natural landscape. The second section gathers works that focus on the consequences generated by the border understood as a space of enjoyment: from socio-political dynamics to the economic and cultural repercussions it produces. The third section considers the border as a place of possibility: the works imagine crossing, dislocation, and the re-signification of limits, activating forms of resistance and disobedience.
The selection of works on display features loans from some of the leading international artists who work with the theme of borders, and who, through their art, speak about globalization, inequalities, colonialism, and identity.
The works, ranging from painting to installation, from sculpture to video, address the theme of borders with the aim of making them visible, intelligible, and ultimately surmountable, defusing the discriminatory and colonial modes they carry with them.
Inside the exhibition path, there are visual maps of the reflections of anthropologist Chiara Brambilla, associate professor at the Department of Human and Social Sciences at the University of Bergamo, who has significantly contributed to the theoretical development of the concept of borderscape, the guiding theme of the exhibition.
The works of the Imago Mundi Collection – all in the format of 10×12 cm – come from various collections and therefore from different areas of the world, such as Mexico, South Korea, Palestine, Venezuela, Kurdistan, Cyprus, Syria, Italy, and others, tracing a geography marked by tensions related to borders and unresolved issues regarding frontiers.
“Drawing a boundary – explained curator Mattia Solari – is never a neutral act. Delimiting space has, since ancient times, been an action laden with symbolic and political implications, mystery, and violence. Myths and narratives about the birth of boundaries traverse mythologies and histories, providing genealogies that are anything but peaceful and linear.”
The project manager of the Chiara Longhi Foundation emphasized how “the interdisciplinary nature of the exhibition, which includes perspectives that go beyond art history, investigating anthropology and international relations, offers a careful and unprecedented view of international complexity.”
The Gallery of Prisons is itself an exhibition within the exhibition, a sign and content of a world that for centuries has confined and that today instead opens its gaze to the changing world, capable of questioning itself, providing answers, and creating new languages.
