THE PROJECT

Iconoclasm of the Present is a research and art project investigating how societies redefine collective identity through the transformation, displacement, or destruction of images from Byzantine iconoclasm to the fall of Constantinople and the contemporary removal of monuments. Each of these moments reveals a shared impulse: the urge to rewrite visual memory in order to assert a new order.

Images, whether sacred, political, or symbolic, are not relics but living, mutable entities, carriers of meaning that evolve through acts of resistance, erasure, or reinterpretation. Through historical research and artistic intervention, the project seeks to construct a visual narrative that examines how memory and oblivion are inscribed in urban spaces and embodied in artistic gestures.

At a time of shifting geopolitical balances and contested symbols, Iconoclasm of the Present reflects on what societies choose to preserve or suppress, and why. The residency and ensuing creative phase will culminate in a solo exhibition in Berlin in autumn 2026, presenting the first outcome of this ongoing reflection.

EMANUELE RESCE

Emanuele Resce (*1987 Benevento, lives and works in Milan) investigates the relationship between matter, the posthuman, and the dialectic between anthropogenic and geological time through sculptural practices integrating natural and industrial recycled materials. Employing archaic techniques and aleatory processes, the artist deconstructs the anthropocentric ideology of formal mastery over matter.

The suspension of control becomes a means of discovery, letting latent and discordant forms surface. His works adopt the method of reusing post-industrial materials common in Southern Italy’s suburban contexts, configuring temporal stratifications devoid of teleology, acting as cultural fossils where deep past and contemporaneity hybridize.