MÄNTTÄ.- The Quest for Happiness – Italian Art Now presents a selection of the most interesting Italian contemporary artists following the scarlet thread of the pursuit of happiness. The majority of them have never exhibited in Finland before.

For many of them, creativity and energy have been the answer to the economic and political crisis that struck Italy in 2008 – as well as the whole Western world. After a decade of geopolitical overturn, happiness became a value of rising importance and a remarkably popular subject in many fields: personal achievement, job contexts, academic researches, consumerism and environment protection, to name a few.

The exhibition’s artists present through their artworks a kaleidoscopic interpretation of the concept of happiness today, touching on key topics such as spirituality and materialism, family and communities, time and nature, history and identity, politics and freedom, feelings and technologies. The show offers a chance to investigate what happiness means in contemporary art from the viewpoint of young and mid-career Italian artists who have already experienced one of the most severe political, economic and social crisis in generations.

Yuri Ancarani, Silvia Camporesi, Loris Cecchini, Federica Di Carlo, Goldschmied & Chiari, Francesco Jodice, Marzia Migliora, Matteo Montani, Okkult Motion Pictures (Alessandro Scali & Marco Calabrese), Federico Pietrella, Pietro Ruffo, Marinella Senatore, Federico Solmi and ZimmerFrei: 14 artists from Northern to Southern Italy, working with a variety of media (painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, performance, installation, video, new media) to form a wide and fresh spectrum of the contemporary art production in Italy in the recent years, away from the Italian clichés abroad.

The exhibition is curated by Maria Stella Bottai, Lorella Scacco and Pirjo Immonen.

Artists Loris Cecchini, Marzia Migliora, Matteo Montani and Goldschmied & Chiari are present at the exhibition opening and the press meeting in the Serlachius Museums on 25 October 2019.

Additional programme of the exhibition:

• 8 March 2020 Marinella Senatore’s performance which is completed in workshops that her The School of Narrative Dance organises at Serlachius Museums.

• 8 March 2020 Outi Pinomaa’s lecture: The use of Italian words in the terminology of art, music and gastronomy in Finnish language.

• 7–8 March 2020 Italian Food Weekend at Serlachius Museums’ Restaurant Gösta.

To accompany the exhibition, a catalogue in three languages has been published by Parvs Publishing Ltd.