#exhibitions_&_conferences

AMNESIE - STEFANO CAGOL, WE ARE THE FLOOD, edited by Elisabetta Zerial

When:
03/06 - 31/12/2025
- Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday from 9:30 To 13:00, from 13:30 To 18:00
- Friday, Saturday, Sunday from 10:00 To 13:00, from 14:00 To 19:00

Where:
CASA KRAINER
Via Rastello 43
34170 Gorizia (GO)

AMNESIE - STEFANO CAGOL, WE ARE THE FLOOD, edited by Elisabetta Zerial

Stefano Cagol’s installation We Are The Flood fits with extraordinary power into the Amnesie review, promoted in the context of GO!2025 BORDERLESS – European Capital of Culture, exploring the delicate balance between memory and oblivion, between responsibility and removal. The title itself – We Are the Flood – is a radical statement that directly calls the viewer into question: the flood is not an inevitable natural event, but the result of our actions, of the accumulation of our choices and non-choices, of our inability to safeguard the past and face the crises of the present.

AMNESIE

a project by Zerial Art Project

curated by Elisabetta Zerial 

GO!2025 Borderless Nova Gorica Gorizia European Capital of Culture

 

Amnesie for an entire community, two cities, two nations, with a shared vision of rediscovering, reinterpreting and celebrating cultural heritage.

Zerial Art Project presents the exhibition Amnesie, curated by Elisabetta Zerial, as part of GO!2025 – Borderless Nova Gorica Gorizia European Capital of Culture. Amnesie is developed as a widespread project that brings together ten contemporary artists in four emblematic places of the crossborder territory: Casa Krainer, Palazzo Lantieri, Kinemax and Vila Vipolže. Nova Gorica and Gorizia, once divided by a political and ideological border, today become the symbol of a Europe without barriers, crossed by shared memories and collective traumas. Ten site-specific solo exhibitions — by Stefano Cagol, Nina Carini, Federico Clapis, Massimo Gardone, Andreas Senoner, Desideria Burgio, Andrea Guastavino, Marco Bolognesi, Camilla Marinoni and Marina Moreno — explore amnesia as a fluid condition of contemporary existence: loss, removal, oblivion, but also a fertile space for a possible regeneration of memory. Amnesia, in fact, is not just a subtraction: it is a void which can become possibilities. In Nova Gorica and Gorizia, cities once divided and now united, art becomes a bridge between past and future, between multiple identities and a common feeling.

The architectures of memory

The places that host Amnesie are not simple containers, but true architectures of memory: Casa Krainer, Palazzo Lantieri, Kinemax and Vila Vipolže tell stories of cohabitation and separation, of traces left by time and historical strati fications. Their structures — medieval, Renaissance or in the Gorizia Liberty style — dialogue with the works, amplifying the suspension, the void and the reconstruction that amnesia brings with it: every room, every stone, every fresco becomes a trace of the past, ready to make itself present through contemporary art.

Casa Krainer

Also known as Casa Sticsa, it is a symbolic building in the historic center of Gorizia, documented as early as 1769 but with medieval origins, as evidenced by the ancient stone well in the internal courtyard. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the architect Gerolamo Luzzatto renovated the facade in refined Gorizia Liberty style on behalf of Edoardo Sticsa, blending modernity and Central European memory. The name “Krainer” comes from the historic family hardware store that operated on the ground floor until 1912, a point of reference for the city community. Today, under the management of the company ViaRastello43 S.r.l, Casa Krainer is a dynamic cultural center that hosts events, exhibitions and initiatives dedicated to regional crafts and culture.

The selection of five artists for Casa Krainer works as a microcosm of the theme Amnesie, because each one – from a different perspective – investigates the relationship between memory and oblivion, intertwining languages, materials and expressive modes that dialogue with the historical space of the building. Stefano Cagol invites us to reflect on collective responsibility: he pushes us to recognize that environmental and geopolitical memory is never neutral, but the result of our choices. Andrea Guastavino brings to light traces of a war-ridden past that remains fragmented yet very powerful: the fragility of its memory together with its ability to bear witness and connect. Desideria Burgio with her intervention underlines how the past reappears in the present, teaching us that memory is not a burden, but a force that renews. Andreas Senoner introduces the dimension of regeneration: amnesia not as a sterile void, but as the “raw material” of new narratives, capable of transforming itself rather than simply being passed on. Camilla Marinoni completes the cycle by bringing attention back to the ritual act of remembering, both daily and poetic, reminding us that even the most fragile memory can become an act of resistance, every day.

Together, these five exhibitions reactivate Casa Krainer as a living space of strati fications, dialoguing with the history of the building and its many souls, transforming amnesia into an opportunity for rebirth and a meeting between past and future.

The declinations of Amnesia

In this review, amnesia unfolds in four overlapping and intersecting areas. On a historical and geopolitical level, amnesia acts as an instrument of power: by choosing which events to pass on and which to erase—world wars, imposed borders, genocides, or resistance movements—it creates fragmented identities, suspended between memory and oblivion. On a psychological and emotional level, it is a defense mechanism of the unconscious: forgetting to protect oneself from trauma, but risking losing parts of oneself, leaving open wounds. On the environmental and landscape front, we have lost the deep connection with nature, the rhythm of the seasons and ancient knowledge, while the landscapes themselves become silent archives of submerged memories - ruins, abandoned sites, traces of a past that resists. Lastly, in the area of archives and identity: who are you if you have been prevented from remembering where you come from? Often, identity is built precisely from what has been forgotten or distorted, in an attempt to mend what has been separated. Amnesia manifests itself in the dispersion of documents and the erasure of stories, questioning the construction of the self when roots are denied.

Amnesia is a journey through these languages and territories, a mosaic of visions that gives voice to what has been silenced and transforms the void into a space for reconstruction, in a poetic act of resistance and rebirth.

AMNESIE - WE ARE THE FLOOD, curated by Elisabetta Zerial

Stefano Cagol’s installation We Are The Flood fits with extraordinary power into the Amnesie review, promoted in the context of GO!2025 BORDERLESS – European Capital of Culture, exploring the delicate balance between memory and oblivion, between responsibility and removal. The title itself – We Are the Flood – is a radical statement that directly calls the viewer into question: the flood is not an inevitable natural event, but the result of our actions, of the accumulation of our choices and non-choices, of our inability to safeguard the past and face the crises of the present.

The work moves on two intertwined levels: climate change and geopolitics, two apparently distinct forces, but in reality connected by a common logic of transformation, conflict and loss. Water, the central symbolic element, is at the same time a concrete threat and an archive of memory: it melts glaciers and raises seas, erasing territories, rewriting geographies, forcing entire populations to migrate; but it is also the place where history is deposited, where physical and mental boundaries dissolve, leaving space for a liquid and changing narrative, dif ficult to contain or archive.

In the context of Amnesie, which investigates the role of memory in the construction of identity and the risk of its cancellation, We Are The Flood takes on a particularly incisive dimension. Gorizia and Nova Gorica, cities crossed by mobile borders, cultural strati fications and suspended identities, become the ideal setting for a profound reflection on the relationship between history, politics and nature. Here, the flood evoked by Cagol is not only that linked to the global ecological crisis, but also that of the political divisions that have marked the twentieth century and continue to leave traces in bodies, landscapes and social relations.

The work thus becomes a sort of ephemeral monument to the present time, to its roar and its vulnerability. A work that does not want to be reassuring, but necessary: it places us in front of a mirror in which we are forced to recognize ourselves, to measure ourselves with the collective responsibility of our time. We Are The Flood is not just a work about loss. It is also a warning and a call to awareness. The flood can still be stemmed, if we choose to remember, to act, to recognize the profound connection between past and future.

Cagol asks us to abandon any posture of neutrality: we can no longer consider ourselves passive spectators of change, nor believe that the crises that surround us are phenomena far from us. Like the waters that submerge and then retreat, leaving behind a new landscape, We Are The Flood invites us to look beyond the loss, to rediscover what remains, to choose what to save and how. Perhaps memory is not just an archive, but an act of resistance. Perhaps we can still hold on to what defines us, build dams of awareness against oblivion, recognize the inseparable bond between us and what surrounds us.

The water rises, but the voice of memory can still be heard, if we know how to listen to it.

 

 

 

 

Contacts

Organizer email info@zerialartproject.com Organizer phone number +39 3517662597

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