In the International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation, an idea by the Trento Film Festival sees the Mart and the MUSE joining forces, together with the Festival, to bring the big new exhibition project by Sebastião Salgado to Trentino. With art direction by Lélia Wanick Salgado, and curated by Gabriele Lorenzoni (Mart) and Luca Scoz (MUSE), this exhibition is produced in collaboration with Agenzia Contrasto and Studio Salgado.
One of the world’s best-known artists, throughout his lengthy career the photographer, activist and humanist Sebastião Salgado has told of deep social, environmental and economic change, giving a voice to the planet’s weakest. In recent years, he has dedicated hundreds of photos to one of the most amazing natural environments and at the same time one of the ecosystems most at risk: that of permanent snow.
In Rovereto and in Trento, Glaciers becomes a multi-location exhibition for which Salgado has selected a series of photos, most on show for the first time. This project is a unique chance for learning and understanding more about the poetry of this artist and, at the same time, it is a chance to address one of the most urgent issues of our time, that of climate change.
The exhibition is in fact part of a wider context: the United Nations General Assembly has in fact unanimously adopted the proposal to declare 2025 the International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation. Scientific monitoring since the 1960s has clearly revealed how, one decade after another, we are seeing a constant, dramatic reduction in volume and surface of the world’s glaciers, some of which are actually now extinct. The disappearance of the glaciers leads, primarily, to the cultural loss of priceless landscape of breath-taking majesty that have fascinating generations of travellers, artists and poets. In addition, the glaciers are fundamental elements for the regulation of the hydrological cycle and local and global climate, they are alive and advocates of life, and on them depends the supply of drinking water for two billion people and two thirds of international agricultural irrigation.
The exhibition project comprises two complementary sections organised in two different museums, whose separate focuses, art and science, correspond to the themes covered in the exhibition.
For the Mart in Rovereto Salgado has chosen over 50 photos in large and very large format of glaciers from all over the world, while for the MUSE he has designed a huge site-specific installation in the “Grande Vuoto (Big Void)” area that the architect Renzo Piano imagined as the beating heart of the museum. All taken in Canada, in Kluane Park, the photos on show in Trento make a single large nucleus. The show strengthens the commitment by the Trento Film Festival to defend the environment and natural ecosystems and enriches the content of the 73rd edition, in Trento from 25 April to 4 May.
