about

The Great Wall of Memes is a research project in the form of a visual archive. It is loosely based on the “Mnemosyne Atlas” by Aby Warburg, updating his idea in the light of the current participatory and viral cultural context. The goal is to retrace the travels of various images through time and space, highlighting the different ways in which they have been used, remixed and re-invented.
The collection also places emphasis on the metamorphic nature of today’s cultural products. The wide-scale diffusion of computers and access to the Internet have in fact made it possible for a vast number of people to emancipate themselves from the role of spectator by actively participating in the construction of the contemporary visual scenario. The most surprising aspect however regards the use, by these new amateurs, of aesthetics and practices normally associated with contemporary art: appropriation, remix, détournement, reenactment, context shifting, re-use of archive materials. An heritage that is not always absorbed consciously, but that takes on a new life in contact with the new, wild, cultural lifeblood of the web.
This new situation forces us to rethink the role of the artist as creator of images and of the work of art as a vector of meaning within society. A simple image between images, art is being reabsorbed in the maelström of visual culture, ending up undergoing, by a mass of anonymous creators, the very same treatment that it itself introduced and applied for decades.

The project began in 2012 as a collection of art related internet memes (‘Contemporary Art People: y u no have irony?’, available on Facebook and Pinterest) and made its first appearance in a physical space in Milan the following year in the form of a giant wall covered in found images (‘Nothing to See Here’, Swiss Institute, Milan, 2013). In 2014, in the context of the group show ‘Eternal September. The Rise of Amateur Culture’ (Škuc Gallery, Ljubljana) the project reached a whole new level, both online, through a dedicated blog, and in the exhibition space, with a new custom installation: the memes are now carefully tagged and organized in thematic clusters.
The Wall of Memes has been also installed in Sankt Gallen (Switzerland) for the exhibition ‘The Darknet – From Memes to Onionland. An Exploration’ at the Kunst Halle (2015), in Madrid for the exhibition ‘Upload / Download. Photography and The Internet’ in the context of PHotoEspaña 2017 and in St. Petersburg (Russia) at the Hermitage Museum in the context of the project “Here I Live” (MediaCongress 2018).