Around Town with Nari Ward (two-year course)

Focus areas

An interdisciplinary activity that cuts across a range of different subjects, including civics, history, geography, human sciences, art history, and Italian and foreign literature.

Nari Ward spent his early years in Jamaica but when he was twelve, his family moved to Brooklyn, New York, and then to New Jersey. In the late 1980s he went to live in Harlem and later studied at a number of American colleges and at institutes abroad. His decision to settle in New York and, in particular in Harlem, the “Big Mango” as it is known, proved to be fundamental for his artistic research and development. It became the place where he was able to elaborate thoughts and projects linked to the themes of consumerism, social justice and racial issues, in artworks that tell a personal but also a collective story.

The students will first be divided into groups so that they can visit the exhibition autonomously, guided by images and key words associated with the city of New York. At the end of the group experience, they will come together and share their ideas and the reasons why they chose to pair the artworks with the references they were given. Then they will work together to compose a work based on the considerations that emerged during their experience of the exhibition. The work will regard Milan and will convey their reflections, thoughts and possible actions in relation to the city.