The Italian photographer Rocco Venezia will be at Void for a pop-up exhibition and the presentation of his book Nekyia (Witty Kiwi. 2017). Come to check it, as the exhibition will be here for just 2 days.

About the book:

Nekyia is a concept used by the philosopher C. G. Jung in the early 20th century as part of his analytical psychology, for him the Nekyia represent the “introversion of the conscious mind into the deeper layers of the unconscious psyche.”
More simply an inner journey of restoration for the whole man psyche. However, the word Nekyia comes from the ancient Greek ritual by which deceased's ghosts were called up and questioned about the future. A number of sites in Greece and Italy were dedicated to this practice but the only oracle of death in ancient Greece it is believed to be located on the banks of the Acheron, a river that nowadays rises and flows in the region of Epirus in northwestern Greece. The great classic poems: Odyssey, after Aeneid and later Divine Comedy's Inferno, also underlined the river's strong relation with the mythology of death, using the
Acheron to indicate the sacred boundary between the mortal life and the afterlife. The main characters in these poems had to descent at some point into the underworld to acquire knowledge after facing various quests or dialogue with the spectres, this
made them stronger, enabled them to understand the past and made ready to face the future. Using the river Acheron as a guide for my personal nekyia across Epirus, my aim is to create a metaphorical and allegorical perspective on modern day Greece, juxtaposing the mythology heritage of the region to the current political-economical situation. Nekyia has been exhibited in Italy, China and Uk. The same project has been published on the British Journal of Photography and Maps Magazine. The dummy
book of Nekyia has been selected for the first dummy/book show in Bristol Photobook Festival 2016 , in May 2017 Nekyia became a book published by Witty Kiwi.

About Rocco

Venezia photographic practice is placed in the genre of contemporary documentary. The subject of his works originate from a personal interest in literature as well as a certain awareness of European political and economical situations. Embracing visual strategies that utilise both traditional documentary and more conceptual forms of representation, his aim is always to investigate these macro themes with a very personal approach. After attending a photojournalistic course in Milan and then work with a news agency for several months, in September 2013 Venezia started a BA in Documentary Photography at Newport, University of South Wales from where he graduated in May 2016. Venezia while working on his personal documentary projects, is collaborating as assistant curator for the Photographic Museum
Of Humanity, and has co-founded with Perils Pappas an artist in residency program in Meliggoi (Ioannina).


http://www.veneziarocco.com/