Carolina Pimenta exhibits at MIA Fair as part of Portofino Residencies 2021–2024

Carolina Pimenta's High Seas, High Hopes aims to deconstruct Portofino's idealized image navigating the complex interplay of luxury and authenticity, tourism and local life, and offering a nuanced reflection on the contemporary Mediterranean myth.

Overview

A collaboration between PhMuseum and Portofino Dry Gin, each year the Portofino Residency brings a visual artist to Portofino, inviting them to explore and interpret the Italian Riviera after their own research.

The exhibition Portofino Residencies 2021-2024 reunites works by Alejandro Chaskielberg, Piergiorgio Sorgetti, Martina Giammaria and Carolina Pimenta, shaping a narrative that ranges from social commentary to dreamlike visions, from landscape re-elaborations to the analysis of a collective memory.

The journey began in 2021 with Argentine photographer Alejandro Chaskielberg, who immersed himself in the expressive magic of a nocturnal Portofino. In 2022, Italian Piergiorgio Sorgetti captured the vibrancy and freshness of the Ligurian summer with Summer Glow. In 2023, Martina Giammaria's Dream of a Blue Garden transformed the village into a surreal universe, a dream within a dream, articulated between dancers immersed in the landscape and suggestions given by artificial intelligence.

In 2024, the project evolved into an international open call. Photographer Carolina Pimenta, a Portuguese artist active between Mexico City and Lisbon, was selected to narrate the complexity of Portofino through High Seas, High Hopes. The project explored the contrasts between luxury and authenticity, tourism and local life, deconstructing the iconic image of the village and offering a reflection on the myth of the contemporary Mediterranean. Pimenta’s images trace a relentless movement, a rush to seek, know, understand, and shape an idea and then its opposite. An instinctive mosaic takes shape, unafraid of contradiction: her Portofino is a reality of sharp contrasts, where ultra-glamour and more accessible, human, imperfect gestures clash and mirror each other. Local life and tourism, yachts and ferries, the shade of private beaches and sunburns, freshly caught fish and the glare of shop windows. As we jump from one detail to another, like Pimenta, we try not to fixate on a single idea but to let several coexist.

The exhibition is located at Mia Fair's stand A010, as part of the area dedicated to Institutions. Giuseppe Oliverio (PhMuseum's Founding Director) and Camilla Marrese (PhMuseum's Visual Editor) will be on-site on Thursday 20 March and Friday 21 March, welcoming visitors interested in knowing more about the residency project and the online platform.