Autonomia Artistica's 'Monster of Saline' at Studioeo, Milan

The collective Autonomia Artistica, composed of Andrea Caira (Cosenza, 1991) and Arianna Cavigioli (Milan, 1995), presents their first exhibition 'Monster of Saline' at Studioeo in Milan. The space is transformed with plastic sheets, soil, and industrial residues into a unified environment where tunnels and shadows accompany the story of Liquichimica Biosintesi in Saline Joniche. The artists discovered the industrial complex by chance while traveling along the SS 106 highway. Liquichimica was a massive plant built in 1970 on former bergamot groves of the ancient salt pan on the Ionian coast, part of a modernization plan for Calabria. It was declared unusable two days after its inauguration, leaving 750 workers on unemployment benefits. The ruin's devastation becomes an aesthetic and political starting point to reflect on the state's failures in southern Italy. Artifacts, photographs, and drawings (all named in numerical sequence starting from SS 106) recompose fragments of a story moving between personal and political, intimate and shared, revealing the (in)human face of devastation.