PRIMAVERA

Since 2024, the German-Italian artist duo Tim Gassauer and Manu Gruber have been exploring the question of a possible return of fascism in Europe in their project »PRIMAVERA«.

The starting point for this collaborative work is the Ossola Valley located in the northern Italian Alps, which was liberated from the fascist occupiers by Italian partisans in September 1944 and became a sovereign partisan republic for a period of 40 days.

Based on the history of resistance in the Ossola Valley, Tim Gassauer and Manu Gruber follow the traces of the partisan republic to its intersections with a political present that can increasingly be understood as (pre-)fascist. »PRIMAVERA« combines images of alpine mountain landscapes and architecture with portraits of young adults who are now the same age their equally young ancestors were when they joined the armed resistance against fascism around 80 years ago.

In collaboration with the »Casa della Resistenza« memorial site in Verbania, Tim Gassauer and Manu Gruber also researched archive material showing the young circles of friends of the partisans who, with limited resources, stood up to the superior German SS and Wehrmacht units. The subsequent interweaving of historical and contemporary visual contexts opens up a space for reflection that uses the ongoing questioning of the past for its significance for the present as a method of visual insight.