Digital Diasporas with Alessio Mazzaro

We are so excited to share the first instalment of Digital Diasporas for 2021 with multidisciplinary artist and performer Alessio Mazzaro. Mazzaro’s most recent project, La parole transmise (2015-20) is a trilogy of works which focus on the migration of Jews from Morocco to Paris and Montreal. In the lens of documentary filmmaking and storytelling, Mazzaro creates a space of encounter and coexistence through conversation. By doing so, he aims to expand not only the ownership of a narrative, but also the group of people which it represents. Join us for a live discussion and Q&A with Alessio to hear more about his practice, and how his projects have shifted amid the pandemic.

About the Artist:

Alessio Mazzaro is an Italian artist, theatre performer, histories researcher, and former engineer. He is interested in meaning-making through collective conversation. Currently, Mazzaro has been enquiring how spectators and citizens – through processes of narrative exchange (testimony, feedback, and imagination) – can change their surroundings, be it a work of art they are witnessing, the urban space where they live, or a historical narration they have inherited.

Mazarro is the recipient of the ECF Courageous Citizens Research Grant (2018), and he has been an artist-in-residence at the Cité internationale des Arts (Paris), Residencia Artistica Faap and Pivo Arte Pesquisa (São Paulo). He collaborated with the Center for Global Migration Studies and the Max Plack Institute for Ethnic and Religious Diversity (Göttingen), and was assistant to Petrit Halilaj and Flaka Haliti at the Venice Art Biennale. His work has been presented at Muntpunt, Recyclart and Galerie Felix Frachon (Brussels), La colonie and Galerie de la Cité internationale des arts (Paris), H2/61.26, (Casablanca), Studio RCA (London), LADA: Live Arts Development Agency (London), Eastern Bloc (Montreal), Electric Eclectics Festival 2015 (Meaford, ON), Popps Packing (Detroit), Tate Modern (within Tate Exchange), Spike Island Open Studios (Bristol) and SuperNormal 2016 (UK), Prize Fondazione Francesco Fabbri per l’Arte Contemporanea, CampoBase and Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa (Italy).

About Digital Diasporas: 
Much as a diaspora describes the dispersal of a people across space, this series explores the new movements artists are taking away from their practice in the digital world or how they are working in ways that forge new communities and connections despite geographic distance. In short, it’s a series about being apart, together. Join us each month as selected artists take us through their practice prior to the pandemic, their innovations in response to social distancing, and their visions for the future.