Murals in Turin as tesserae of a scenographic mosaic spread in the urban landscape: can art reveal new local identities?

Abstract

Michel Foucault, in The Words and Things, recognizes among the fundamental characteristics of modern thought the constant need to reflect on the relationship that is established between "thought" and its "representation" and how the latter is connoted as essential through communication.

Street art, understood as a form of artistic expressive creativity, is part of these communicative processes that find their legitimacy in the development of a system of representations. Many representations and drawings, starting from prehistoric graffiti, have had the primary function of transmitting a message, often oscillating between competing aims: to suggest and arouse emotions, to spread knowledge, to transfer or induce knowledge, to give different interpretations of the world and life.

The contribution reports the results of our research that aims to investigate Street art and its semantic redetermination by deepening the plurality of forms, figures, techniques and action and management strategies that have been implemented and experimented in the city and territory of Turin in recent years. Taking advantage of the comparative analysis method, it has been possible to evaluate, through targeted examples, those results and inventive solutions that still today appear to have the greatest impact: a reading of works conducted also through different criteria, based on the analysis and critical comparison of expressive intentions and representative solutions, linked to the relationships that these works have with the architectural contexts and with the urban structure of reference.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.20365/disegnarecon.24.2020.20