Romeo Mivekannin's 'Black Mirror' at Collezione Maramotti

Collezione Maramotti in Reggio Emilia presents 'Black Mirror', the first solo exhibition in Italy by Ivorian artist Romeo Mivekannin (b. 1986, Bouaké). Running until July 27, the show features twenty large-scale acrylic-on-black-velvet paintings hung without frames, allowing them to float on the walls. Mivekannin inserts his own self-portrait into iconic artworks by Old Masters like Rembrandt and Caravaggio, as well as referencing Goya's Black Paintings, Masaccio's Brancacci Chapel, Pier Paolo Pasolini's 'Salò', the Kosovo war, South African apartheid, and Pina Bausch's dance archetypes. His conceptual strategy subverts power dynamics and representation, forcing viewers to confront the relationship between history and myth, individuality and collectivity, memory and oblivion. The artist's gaze follows visitors throughout the space, creating a magnetic interplay of citations. The exhibition draws on African traditions through Western symbols, creating a destabilizing 'black mirror' that oscillates between opposites: light and dark, sacred and profane, visible and invisible.