Mohamed Keita. Porto Roma

Promoted by the Department of Culture of Rome Capital and Azienda Speciale Palaexpo, the free exhibition organised in collaboration with Mosaico Studio at the Mattatoio di Roma shows Rome as seen through the attentive and sensitive gaze of Mohamed Keita, a young photographer born in Ivory Coast who now lives and works between Rome and Bamako (Mali).

The photographs on display in Pavilion 9b of the Mattatoio eschew clichés and glossy representations, inviting us to rediscover the city in its most authentic dimension, made up of imperfections, wonders and secrets, hidden details, intimate urban landscapes and human presences that tell stories of everyday life and resilience. The title of the exhibition reflects the photographer’s personal vision and alludes to the ambivalent nature of the city: a place of arrival and departure, refuge and threshold, a port of the soul, where the ancient dialogues with the present and humanity merges with the silence of spaces. 

The exhibition begins with some of the photographs taken by Keita during his first ten years in Rome and collected in the volume Roma 10/20. The exhibition continues with the series Ritratti (Portraits), key points on an artistic and personal map of the capital, and with the series Prima-Dopo (Before-After), born from the urgency to document the changes in places and things day after day, capturing the effects of light and the passage of time on the urban landscape and creating a dialogue between past and present.