What's my name

Sofia Valabrega’s project

Academic year

2025 - 2026

The project unfolds in the oratory of a peripheral Turin neighborhood, frequented by boys aged 10 to 13, many second generation immigrants.
At this stage, identity is still forming, and the body becomes the site through which one defines oneself and enters others’ gaze.
Names, too, participate in this recognition, sometimes as belonging, sometimes as distance.

The soccer field becomes a stage: the boys, like actors, perform themselves, letting an identity still in the making appear.
 

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