Casa Masaccio | Center for Contemporary Art, in collaboration with LIS10 Gallery Arezzo – Paris, presents a solo exhibition by LAETITIA KY  entitled L'AMBIGUA AVVENTURA , curated by Alessandro Romanini , dedicated to female empowerment in the art system and in society. 

The Ivorian artist Laetitia Ky (Abidjan 1996), has been developing an absolutely original artistic activity for many years, which crosses the expressive dimension with that of civil and political commitment in a broad sense and from a technical point of view, synergistically unites different artistic disciplines, from photography to painting, from sculpture to performance, from videomaking to cinema.

In particular, she has developed a theoretical and technical research related to the so-called “hair sculptures”, in which the hairstyle, a distinctive and identifying sign, a non-verbal language in the African continent, becomes an instrument of identity and gender assertion.

Although her activity has led her to a frenetic international activity in the space of a few years, as demonstrated by recent exhibition events, from the 2022 Venice Biennale, branded Cecilia Alemani, in which she represented her country Côte d'Ivoire in the national pavilion, the Musée des Art Decoratifs in Paris, the Musée des Beaux Art in Caen, to the Kunstmuseum in Wolfsburg to name a few, and seminar commitments and workshops such as those held at the Tate Modern in London with the curator Osei Bonsu, the “Ted Conference” held in Atlanta, “Based” in Istanbul etc.. without forgetting the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, for her performance as the female protagonist in the film “Disco Boy”, she has never forgotten her close relationship with Tuscany.

A relationship that began many years ago, first through a passion passed on to her by her mother (her younger sister is called Florence, in honor of the regional capital) and later through studies and research connected to the Renaissance and architecture, culminating with her technical and stylistic research that led her to investigate sculpture in the territories of Carrara (where she carried out a photographic campaign linked to the quarries, history and craftsmanship), in Pietrasanta where she visited and worked with the local foundries and laboratories, in Arezzo for the link with Vasari and his “Lives” as well as with Masaccio and his “Madonna del Solletico” in particular.

In 2022 she received the prestigious recognition of the Silver Pegasus from the hands of the President of the Regional Council of Tuscany Antonio Mazzeo, on the occasion of the Tuscany Women's Week, for her commitment to civil rights in general and women's rights in particular, within the scope of her artistic activity.

For 2024, in consideration of this close relationship with the Tuscan territory and its history and the coherence with its own poetic-identitarian research and political commitment in a broad sense, it has conceived an exhibition for Casa Masccio that translates into visual form a series of reflections of various nature but interconnected; “L'ambigua Avventura”, inspired by the homonymous essay by Cheik Hamidou Kane (1961); in this context, a reflection linked to the “Black” identity nature, its social consequences and the duplicity connected to the dialectic between cultural and colonial roots intersect in a synergic way, to which is added a reflection connected to gender and the discriminations still in place today and last but not least a reflection on the genius loci of Tuscany.

This entire conceptual complex is coordinated by a reflection linked to the gaze, to vision and ultimately to representation.

For centuries, the vision of Africa and its inhabitants has been represented from a Eurocentric point of view and both the artistic path and the exhibition event in particular, focus on experimentation, rewriting new parameters of self-representation, to free themselves from an ethno-anthropological meaning that has been widespread in the West since the time of Hegel and the statements published in Philosophy of History (1821-1831).

The Ivorian artist was struck from a very young age, during her high school history studies, by the early abolition of the death penalty and torture in Tuscany by the then Grand Duke of Tuscany Pietro Leopoldo in 1786.

Similarly, she found inspiration in Tuscan female figures, among whom she indicates the Florentine Carla Lonzi (1931 – 1982), activist, essayist, art critic and theorist of self-awareness and feminism, one of the founders of the Rivolta Femminile editions in the early Seventies.