Come on, smile!

Francesca Paoletta'S project

Academic year

2025 - 2026

Today the smile signals connection and ease, yet its origins lie in a very different ethological register: the snarl of canids and the open mouth threat of primates. Over time, it shifted from menace to symbol, still serving to diffuse tension in social life.

Within patriarchal culture, the smile became a tool for regulating women’s behavior: a gesture of grace and compliance, repeated as continuous emotional labor. Aggression, permitted for men, is suppressed in women. Refusing to smile breaks the norm; the unsmiling face becomes a political act, a subtle return of the snarl that reclaims agency.
 

The Searchlights is the second chapter of Ti vorrei dire, a three-year project developed in collaboration with Gallerie d'Italia - Torino, a part of Intesa Sanpaolo. The projects map out the urgencies of our time through the perspective of a new generation. Ecological and climate crises, dynamics of power and representation, identity, mental health, precarity, memory and narratives of the present run through the works, shaping a collective account that restores complexity to what is too often reduced to a label.

Curated by:
Carlotta Cattaneo, Daria Scolamacchia, Giulia Ticozzi
With teaching support from:
Luis Aniceto, Francesca Cirilli, Fabio Barile, Diego Fontana, Alessandra Foschi, Simona Taddeucci, Jacopo Loiodice, Céline Volonterio