The exhibition project “Infancy and History” takes its title and inspiration from the renowned collection of essays published in 1978 by the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben. Yet, it neither aims to be a mere illustration or adaptation of this philosophical enquiry, nor does it wish to be developed into an exhibition about the history of childhood. Rather, it takes on the challenge to follow some of the working methodologies indicated by Agamben, and translate those to the realm of aesthetics and visual arts, where the two poles – infancy and history – become intertwined reference terms that circumscribe the field of our research and provide the ground for a possible experimental critical approach. 

The gaze towards infancy becomes in this case a powerful tool and method of analysis, allowing deconstructions of dominant narratives, official historiographies and dichotomies, such as those between the rational and irrational, universal and individual (particular), natural and cultural.

The curatorial team attempts to create a field of visibility and legibility of those “discourses of things” and gestures, which can allow us to reread and reinterpret history from a different angle. Each of the materials gathered in this exhibition provides a historical witness of its own cultural background, and the emergence and gradual mutation of the perception and understanding of the notion “childhood” in different geographical and historical contexts.