Exhibitions and Festival
Re - Resistance Ester Valabrega, a possible archive
Date
23 April 2026
Time
18:00 PM - 20:00 PM
Fruition
In-person event
The exhibition Re — Resistance. Ester Valabrega, a possible archive, a photography project by Sofia Valabrega, a student in the Undergraduate Photography program at IED Torino—opens on Thursday, April 23, at 6:00 PM at the Polo del '900 in Turin.
Part of the EXPOSED Torino Photo Festival circuit, the exhibition will be open until April 30 at the Galleria delle Immagini (Palazzo San Celso, Piazzetta Antonicelli, Turin), from 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM with free admission.
The project is the result of over two years of research conducted under the guidance of Professor Matteo Balduzzi. It engages with the figure of Ester Valabrega: a combatant partisan and member of Primo Levi's group, who remained on the margins of both family and historical memory for a long time. By alternating between real documents, digital re-elaborations, and synthetic imagery, the exhibition moves between the objective dimension of the archive and the more intimate sphere of reenactment, restoring photography's value as a tool for critical inquiry and the reactivation of memory.
Through the intertwining of collective history and family narrative, Re — Resistance retraces crucial moments of Italian history—racial persecution, WWII, and the Resistance—while questioning the dynamics of how public and private memory is suppressed or transmitted.
The exhibition project, curated by Matteo Balduzzi, is the result of a collaboration between IED Torino, the "Giorgio Agosti" Piedmontese Institute for the History of the Resistance and Contemporary Society (Istoreto), and the Primo Levi International Study Center.
The inauguration on April 23 will be preceded by an introductory talk in the adjacent Conference Hall, featuring speakers Chiara Colombini (Istoreto), Roberta Mori (Centro Studi Primo Levi), Professor Matteo Balduzzi, and the artist Sofia Valabrega. A guided tour with the author and curator will follow.
On April 25 (Liberation Day), the exhibition will be open to the public from 3:00 PM to 5:00 PM, with the artist in attendance.
For further information: polodel900.it
