A publication tracing the itinerary of Fiamma Montezemolo's anthropological and artistic research, across Italy, Mexico, and the United States.
For any anthropologist, fieldwork represents both a professional obligation and a rite of passage. For Fiamma Montezemolo, as for Fred Murdock, the protagonist of Borges' El Etnógrafo (1969), this rite of passage is a break and a crossing: a break from anthropology's traditional forms of expression and a crossing into the realm of visual art.
Over the past three decades, moving across Italy, Mexico, and the United States, Montezemolo has challenged the idea of individual research to value intersubjective and collaborative practices, crossing geopolitical, metaphorical, and disciplinary borders.
Following the stages of Borges' short story, this publication traces the itinerary of Montezemolo's anthropological and artistic research, unveiling a vibrant archive comprising people encountered in person, places lived, research carried out in the field, and symbolic and physical trespassings that trained the artist's gaze and empathy towards reality.
Presenting an ample selection of artworks, archival and photographic research material, reprinted and original writings by the artist and/or other people, Hidden in Plain Sight is an auto-anthology carefully curated to reveal the rich tapestry of Montezemolo's diverse work.
Born in Rome, Fiamma Montezemolo is both a cultural anthropologist (PhD, University of Naples) and an artist (MFA, San Francisco Art Institute). She is an established scholar in border studies and the author of several publications. As an artist she situates her work as a critical extension of the ethnographic turn in contemporary art, and works with various media, including installation, cartography, video, digital photography, archives, and ethnography.
Edited by Martina Angelotti,
Contributions by Fiamma Montezemolo, Martina Angelotti, Federica Giardini, Andrea Viliani; reprinted texts by Fiamma Montezemolo and Xavier Andrade, Néstor García Canclini, Ana María Forero, Josh Kun, René Peralta, Renato Rosaldo, Lucía Sanromán, Heriberto Yépez; artworks by: Fiamma Montezemolo and Don Hải Phú Daedalus, Sami Elhaik, José Parral, Rebecca Solnit, Massimo Tennenini.
