7 November – 14 December 2025
https://www.mast.org/foto/industria-2025
Eleven exhibitions in eight venues
The 7th edition of the Bolognese Biennale “Foto/Industria” by the MAST Foundation focusses on the theme “Home”. This involves a wide variety of aspects of the term. Ten international artists and one research agency impart via photography, video and installation their ideas of the subject. There is the traditional concept of home as a house where people live, which could be extended to the home region. It could be the care for the houses of others or the recollection of the personal childhood or collective narratives. The approach is sometimes documentary or fictional, a glance to the recent past or to history.
My Home is my Castle
In “My Dreamhouse is not a House” the Austrian artist Julia Gaisbacher introduces Austria’s first participatory social housing experiment. In the 1970s, Eilfried Huth conceived the Gerlitzgründe residential complex in Graz. The future residents were involved from the beginning in architectural design and implementation. This enabled also families with low income to realise their own home. By the early integration of the residents developed a collaborative relationship between the future neighbours.
Also the Swedish architect and designer Bruno Mathsson focused on relationship. However, his attention was on the relation between individual and environment, whereby the boundaries separating domestic space and natural landscape seem to dissolve. The Swedish artist Mikael Olsson studied from 2000 to 2006 two emblematic villas: Södrakull and Frösakull in Värnamo, South of Sweden. At this time, both houses were inhabited, after giving a home to the modernist architect and his wife. Abandoned after Mathsson’s dead, nature started to infiltrate the buildings. Olsson portraits both. In Frösakull he featured the remains of the house, whereas he dedicated his work in Södrakull more to the exterior. During her many journeys, Ursula Schulz-Dornburg visited numerous regions, which are not easily to access for foreign travellers. In “Some Homes” she presents six series shot from the late 1960s to the early 2010s, which give a good summary of Schulz-Dornburg’s artistic work. In her earliest series “Huts, Temples, Castles” from 1969, the German photographer observed children at adventure playgrounds in Amsterdam, where they constructed temporary homes. In 1978, she photographed ancient wood villas at the Bosphorus, two years later houses from Bugis farmers on the island Sulawesi in Indonesia and buildings in the Iraqi marshlands before their drainage. After the removal of the Soviet military in October 1988, Schulz-Dornburg documented the monastery Caves of Gareja in Georgia and four years later the monumental sculptures in Kronstadt, Russia, which recalls a disassembled city. A video shows the artist in conversation with Peter Kammerer, professor of Sociology at the University of Urbino, in occasion of an exhibition of her last project. After her stay in Kurchatov, Kazakhstan at the late soviet nuclear test site Semipalatinsk and the experience of extreme destructive power of human beings, Ursula Schulz-Dornburg decided not to start any new photo projects. Home RegionFor 13 years, Alejandro Cartagena observed the urban development of his home region around the Mexican city of Monterrey. Several of his photos show monotone house settlements, others disposal sites, newly built roads or people living in their cars. These images are accompanied by US guiding videos how to buy new property. The so advertised strategy for prosperity is undermined by urban sprawl and impoverishment of parts of the population. Most of the presented photos are part of Cartagena’s title giving book “A small guide to Homeownership” from 2020.
Matei Bejenaru’s “Prut” is a long-term project, too. Since 2011, he features the region of the Prut River in Rumania. Here, the rural world aligns to contemporary conditions, like the disappearance of horse carriages, pavement of streets, new private and public buildings. This landscape not only changes due to the “normal” requirements of modernisation, but also because of the system change in Romania after 1989. Still, some old characteristics like ancient plates are visible. However, the series documents the vanishing of others. The research agency “Forensic Architecture” based at Goldsmiths, University of London, investigates already disappeared settlements. In the exhibitions “Looking for Palestine” they outline the destruction of the Palestine village al-Dawayima in October 1948 by Israeli Forces. Maps, aerial photographs and contemporary witness allowed to create an animated landscape model. Furthermore, videos and photos document the massacre and the mass expulsion. Additionally, the exhibition makers, draw a line to the present of continuing displacement. (until 11 January 2026) Recalling HomeMoira Ricci invites us with “Quarta casa” to the Maremma region, where she was born and also to Milan where she lived. In the entrance, a sculpture of herself lies buried under a landscape starting at her feet in the rural Tuscany to finish on her head with the impressions of the second largest city of Italy. “Dove il Cielo è più vicino” (Where the Sky is closer) in the main hall of the MAMbo, is dedicated to the people of the sparsely populated Maremma and their relation to nature. In large images she portraits the inhabitants and the architecture, not without erasing windows and doors of the building. Another chapter features mysterious stories circulating in the region.
It becomes more private by family photos. “20.12.53-10.08.04” seemingly reconstructs the life of Moira Ricci’s mother: family photos, well-known and similar in many European photo albums. However, besides the mother, one person appears permanently. It is the artist herself. Nearby, one can listen to the sound of Irene Cara’s “What a feeling”, not only the soundtrack to the early 1980s cult film “Flashdance” but also to the home videos of Ricca dancing, registered by her mother. Moreover, with “Ioc. Collecchio 26” she reconstructed her parents’ house like it was in her childhood. She was inspired to this three-dimensional photo collages, by the family’s decision to transform the house. (until 11 January 2026)
Also, Vuyo Mabheka reconstructs his childhood as “Popihuise”, using collages from photos, cut outs and painting. Popihuise was in his infancy a popular game, where children created domestic environments with the available materials. Grown up in one of the poorest towns of South Africa, the artist recalls his infantile life by this technique. In this context, he presents not only biographical documents, feelings, dreams and environmental impressions of a bygone time, but connects the past with the present. Living and workingSisto Sisti, a self-taught photographer, lived and worked in the village and chemical plant of Sinigo in South Tyrol. From 1935 to 1950 he portrayed the life in the village, the work in the factory and also leisure activities of the workers and their families. Despite the tensions with regards to a feared Italianisation in the originally German community, political distortions by the fascist government and social disparities, he achieved to document the work, everyday life and particular events of the formerly second largest chemical plant in Europe.
Kelly O’Brien also has an approach to work, but the focus is on domestic work and the women, who are doing it in other people’s homes. Central is a kind of altar, where inscribed grave lights indicate the dedication to care workers. Around, there are photographs of charwomen, partly in ironic postures. Written on mob sticks, there are philosophic reflections about cleaning. A little bit concealed, there is a board with fragmented biographies of care workers – a hint how hidden they are in general awareness? With the exhibition “No Rest for the Wicked” the artist points to class and gender disparities and spotlights the weakest members of societies. 
On view until the 8th of March 2026 is the exhibition “Jeff Wall – Living, Working, Surviving” at the Fondazione MAST. Works from 1980 to 2021are featuring similar themes like the other shows: everyday life and work. At the same time, it is a small retrospective to the career of the renown Canadian photographer. (until 8 March2026)
On view until the 8th of March 2026 is the exhibition “Jeff Wall – Living, Working, Surviving” at the Fondazione MAST. Works from 1980 to 2021are featuring similar themes like the other shows: everyday life and work. At the same time, it is a small retrospective to the career of the renown Canadian photographer. (until 8 March2026)