BERTILLE BAK. Voci dalla terra

Conceived in collaboration with the artist, the exhibition begins on the ground floor of Villa Vela and then unfolds in the rooms on the first floor, establishing an engaging dialogue with the permanent collection and, in particular, with Le vittime del lavoro (The Victims of Work, 1882–83), a masterpiece of Vincenzo Vela's mature artistic career.

Bertille Bak places the human being, the importance of encounters, and the question of work at the center of her research. Guided in her artistic practice by a sense of awareness and empathy, she engages with specific, forgotten and marginalized communities whose daily lives she shares. Through their direct engagement, without a pre-established script, she imagines an alternative narrative using media such as video, drawing, or installation.

Beyond clichés and eschewing any pity, the artist presents complex realities from a new perspective, offering those involved the opportunity to share their stories in ways that are at times subversive or even self-deprecating. At the intersection of sociological documentary and fiction, realism and burlesque, he creates a "story factory" that reinvents everyday life and offers a form of poetic resistance to the harshness of reality.

In the Museum's rooms, his works lend a new interpretation to Vela's Victims of Work, extending the monument's significance to contemporary reality and the question of work in a global and universal sense.