On Thursday 28 May 2026, at 6 pm, Città in/visibili, a solo exhibition by photographer Mouhamed Yaye Traore , will be inaugurated at the MUACC – University Museum of Contemporary Arts and Cultures of the University of Cagliari .
The exhibition, curated by Costanza Meli and Mohamed Keita , with the artistic direction of Simona Campus , is supported by the public notice Photography Strategy 2025, promoted by the General Directorate for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture , and is created in collaboration with the Isole cultural association, as cultural partner.
The exhibition presents for the first time a cycle of twenty photographs by Mouhamed Yaye Traore, a young artist originally from Benin who has lived and worked in Florence for years . Central to his research is the relationship between gaze and identity, explored through an experimental, free, and intuitive approach to the urban landscape. The images on display investigate the forms of the city and of living through a shifting array of presences and landscapes that reveal and conceal themselves, offering different viewpoints and new possibilities for observation .
What do we see in the cities we pass through every day, and what remains invisible? These questions spark a research that begins with subjective experience to reinterpret urban space through movement, memory, and imagination . The city is not a physical reality, but a perceptual construction made up of multiple perspectives and desires, as the reference to Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities in the exhibition title suggests.
The exhibition is divided into three chapters: the boats on the Arno evoke the metaphor of crossing and migration; the people in transit are indistinct presences, silhouettes in the crowd, temporarily sharing the same space; finally, the city dissolves into abstract, intimate, lyrical visions. The city that Yaye Traore shows us is always the same, but in his poetic approach, which straddles photography and painting, it becomes a universal metaphor for every possible city , suggesting how places transform along with those who inhabit and travel through them. At the same time, the city becomes a mirror, as suggested by the reflection on the water, and the photographer seems to tell us that our identities are constructed precisely through constant reflection with the landscape we inhabit and that inhabits us.
The day after the opening, Mouhamed Yaye Traore will lead a workshop dedicated to the city of Cagliari, exploring it with university students through a photographic walk designed to provide an unconventional perspective on the places they have lived in. The workshop aims to connect the themes addressed in the exhibition with the specific reality of the Cagliari context. Throughout its phases, the In/Visible Cities project envisions the involvement of the university community, starting with a series of workshops and initiatives dedicated to the themes of visibility/invisibility and sensorial and cultural accessibility.
The first workshop, “Writing Inclusion,” led by Simona Campus, artistic director of the project and professor of Museology, was developed through the writing of texts to accompany the exhibition as the result of an active participation process: the resulting works will be presented within the exhibition itinerary, becoming an integral part of the visiting experience.
The second workshop, titled "Tra-vedere: Sensory Translation of the Photographic Image," led by Fabio Fornasari and Barbara D'Ambrosio, scholars and experts in museum accessibility, aims to develop tactile devices to translate photographic images into an inclusive viewing experience. The results will be presented in the exhibition as a supplement to the tour.
The project will be accompanied by the publication of a catalog, in Italian and English. A public program is planned, featuring in-depth discussions related to the exhibition's themes and the promotion of the research behind it, in collaboration with the Isole association and the project's other cultural partners: Fondazione MACC Calasetta, Accademia Ligustica di Belle Arti Genova, MLAC Museo Laboratorio di Arte contemporanea "Sapienza" University of Rome, and the HYmmo Art Lab - Stand Up For Africa association.
(Unioneonline)