Espressione 21: Carrara collective of twenty-somethings fights shallow scrolling with deep art

In Carrara, a new artistic collective called Espressione 21 has launched a month-long exhibition at Via Santa Maria 9, aiming to restore depth of gaze in an age of compulsive scrolling. Founded by Deborah Capozzolo, a student at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Carrara, the group responded to a municipal call to reactivate temporarily unused urban spaces. The collective's name references Article 21 of the Italian Constitution, which guarantees freedom of expression. The exhibition, opened yesterday and running until the end of the month, features works by Capozzolo, Lidia Lulli, Giorgia Marsala, Martina Gavuglio, Matteo Marchi, Andrea Bartolini, and Riccardo Adreani—all students or recent graduates of the academy. Their pieces address alienation, loneliness, indifference, social polarization, identity crisis, and the relationship between physicality and digitality. Joh Capozzolo developed the collective's website and contributed sound design to audiovisual works. The group opposes performative individualism and the speed of social media, advocating for community, attention, and experience over personal branding and content consumption.