HOT: NABA, Photo Exhibition 2025

HOT is a group exhibition featuring works by students of NABA’s Academic Master’s in Photography and Visual Design, Milan. Through 17 projects, the exhibition investigates the concept of “hot” through contemporary photography.

Installed in the space of UFO, Milan the event-exhibition brings together 17 projects that investigate the complex theme of heat through the multiple forms of storytelling and representation that the language of photography offers today.

Curated by Luca Andreoni and Francesco Zanot, respectively NABA lecturer and Course Leader of the Master’s program in Photography and Visual Design, the exhibition emerges from the observation of a present marked by global warming, by a geopolitical reality in a constant state of boiling tension, by an information system dominated by the fabrication of “hot news,” by the sexualization of society, and much more. It gathers a series of reflections on the dynamics that shape our relationship with everything that today is, in a literal or metaphorical sense, hot.

From climate change to erotic desire, from breaking news to volcanic eruptions, from overloaded global networks to spicy food, the concept of “hot” can be extended in every direction. Through a multifaceted journey, this exhibition aims to offer a free, contradictory, eccentric, and diverse analysis of everything that may be considered hot, and of the ways in which it can be approached. By deconstructing the main clichés that dominate this theme, HOT composes a complex mosaic based on its principal interpretations, identifying depth and research as essential tools for addressing it, in opposition to any form of superficiality.

The works presented explore the proposed theme through an in-depth analysis of its representation in art, cinema, and literature, while also addressing its presence in psychology, ecology, popular culture, history, and politics.

The breadth of the theme is also reflected in the many ways through which the authors developed their projects, making use of the countless possibilities offered today by the photographic medium—from documenting reality to reconstructing it, from creating new images to recycling pre-existing ones.