Heimatkunde, 1995
The Oil Road, 2007
Oasis Hotel, 2008
The Forgotten Islam, 2009
a) Hidden Islam, 2009-2013
b) 479 Comments, 2014
c) Hidden from Street View (Case Studies), 2016
d) La Comunità errante, 2016
e) Lo Sceriffo & La moschea itinerante, 2017
3. PRISON MUSEUM
a) Prison Photography, 2017
b) Prison Museum, 2021
5. BLUE AS GOLD
a) Blue as Gold, 2017
b) Calais-Dover, 2017
c) And what if the horizon where not a border?, 2017
d) My head under water but breath fine, 2017
e) Mare vostrum, 2017
f) Lampedusa 360°, 2019
CURATORIAL PROJECTS
a) Hämatli & Patriæ
b) The Pigeon Photographer
c) The Long 19th Century Digested
d) The Encyclopedia of Kurt Caviziel
e) Floating Worlds
f) The Hierarchy, Control & Conflict of Images
CV
CONTACT
Heimatkunde, 1995
I took refuge in the arts to escape from identitarian and linguistic constraints. Strongly inspired by personal experiences and the contexts in which I grew up, namely the border lands of South Tyrol and the Ticino, my research is often based on research methodologies that are formally translated into artistic languages speaking of the subversion of minorities and majorities.
In particular, South Tyrol is an area afflicted by an identitarian diplopia, where I struggle on a daily basis to develop personal and professional relationships that are not subject to ethnically-loaded judgements. Around this very issue revolves my work as a whole.
My artistic research is a constant attempt to reflect on the idea of the ‘other’ and to subvert this same concept. I have been doing so since my time at university, where I studied Oriental languages and cultures, shifting the idea of the ‘other’ from a local to a global dimension.
Addressing the stakes of cultural belonging, in particular when this is forced upon rather than felt or experienced, induces me to sympathise with the new communities settling in the local area as a result of migration.
My work comprises photos, videos, maps and documents that chart the territory where I live geographically, socially and conceptually. In so doing, I develop work clusters to which I add chapters over time.
By relying on documentary language and by working closely with members from different minorities, I tend, whenever possible, to publish my projects in a book format, producing installations from the book themselves.
Nicolò Degiorgis
January 2022
a) Hidden Islam - Islamic Makeshift Places of Worship in North-East Italy
Despite being the second religious confession in Italy, with an estimate of 1.5 million adepts, Islam is still formally not recognised by the state. This fact coupled with the political exploitation by populist and far-right parties, brings the Islamic community to officially own only a dozen mosques, none of which located in the North-East of Italy.
Hidden Islam works as cadastral catalogue of typologies of approximately 100 buildings used by local Islamic communities, like warehouses, basements, shops and garages, along with case studies that document specific communities and their history.
b) Hidden Islam – 479 comments
Book first published in 2014 by Rorhof
Hidden Islam – 479 Comments is a conceptual photobook. Uniquely, it contains zero photographs. Instead, it compiles the 479 polarized, often extreme reader comments generated in response to a 2014 Guardian article about the first book, Hidden Islam, along with the cadastral maps of each makeshift mosque.
c) Hidden from Street view (Case studies), 2016
Video installation
Video recordings from Google Street View regarding the Islamic Communities of Spinea and the one of Marghera (VE, Italy), who payed for Google to record its interiors so to show that the community had nothing to hide.
d) La Comunità errante (Letta da Max Meraner)
Video installation
Case study regarding the Islamic Community of Treviso
This installation was originally presented in 2016 at the 16th Quadriennale di Roma, curated by Luigi Fassi.
The work is tracks and maps the presence of the Islamic community in Treviso through an extensive press review composed of over 1,000 articles published from 2001 onward by the local newspaper La Tribuna. The project highlights the social responsibility of local media in driving islamophobic narratives. It demonstrates how public opinion was shaped by populist rhetoric, ultimately transforming a group of permanent citizens into a "wandering community" stripped of stable spaces and basic rights.
The collected political press reviews and articles are interpreted and read aloud by Max Meraner, an actor from Bolzano. The clash between xenophobic local politics and the spiritual needs of the worshippers forced the community to become nomadic, adapting to temporary, rotating spaces just to pray.