By Elisa Capussotto

From 31 October to 2 November 2026, the spaces of the Oval Lingotto Fiere in Turin hosted the thirty-third edition of Artissima, the only Italian fair entirely dedicated to contemporary art, under the direction of Luigi Fassi. This year, with 183 galleries from 35 countries and four continents, the event has reconfirmed itself as a well-known international meeting point for artists, gallery owners, collectors and enthusiasts of all ages and backgrounds.

Despite its commercial scope, Artissima remains an annual meeting place capable of presenting the major transformations of the contemporary art scene, highlighting urgent issues such as memory, cultural identity and history, from the deepest roots of humanity. In particular, some stand out among the works presented that offer a critical look at colonial legacies and the relationships between memory and cultural identity, restoring centrality to narratives, experiences and imaginaries often relegated to the margins.

The works of Heba Y. Amin, an artist born in Cairo in 1980, living in Berlin and presented by the Zilberman Gallery, fit into this narrative. Her multidisciplinary artistic research, which includes photography, video, performance and illustration, investigates the complex and fragile relationships between power, memory, colonialism and control mechanisms. Through an ironic representation and a speculative approach, Amin analyzes and elaborates historical archives, deconstructing systems of representation to underline the ideological structures that make up the Western colonialist canon. On the occasion of the fair, part of the photographic collection, consisting of ten works, “Backdrops from Elsewhere No.6.” (2026).

Cataloguing several nineteenth-century studio photographs taken by Orientalist photographers, the artist intervenes digitally by removing the female figures, originally portrayed, leaving only backgrounds, architectural elements and furnishings. By depriving the images of their subjects, Amin questions the colonial point of view by representing an imaginary East, consisting of bodies and landscapes transformed into objects of desire and observation and, thus, laying bare the cultural and political means hidden behind representation.

Another analysis of the relationship between history and culture is illustrated by Mehdi-Georges Lahlou, a French-Moroccan artist born in France in 1983, presented by the 193 Gallery. His main means of representation include sculpture, photography, performance, collage and video, with which he relates space, memory, body and identity. The duality of Lahlou, who grew up between Islamic and Catholic culture, is addressed through the taboos and teachings of Religion and Society. From the works exhibited at the fair, “Birds of Paradise” and “Date Palm Totem Of the Conference of the Palm Trees” (2026), a symbolic relationship between nature and collective memory emerges. The date palm is the medium that narrates phenomena such as migration and resilience. In her hybrid sculptures between totem and self-portrait, the artist’s body is thus transformed into the trunk of the tree, while its fruits become a symbol of the continuity of life and the succession of future generations. Through the spread of botanical species between territories and cultures, Lahlou also narrates the reminiscences of colonial processes, combining environmental and postcolonial themes in her vision of contemporaneity.

Amani Bodo, born in Kinshasa in 1988, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and son of the well-known painter Pierre Bodo, is presented by the Primo Marella Gallery. Retracing the footsteps of his father, one of the protagonists of Congolese folk painting, Bodo, as a self-taught artist, began painting from childhood, developing a symbolic figurative style with surrealist influences. Through irony and a complex pictorial technique, the artist, starting from his everyday life and the imagery of the popular tradition of Kinshasa, reinterprets the panorama of the history of colonial art. Starting from allegorical compositions capable of dealing with complex social and political issues, his technique originates from mwangisa, characterized by a dense union of dots and shades capable of giving life to nebulous backgrounds, where sky and earth lose their boundaries. In “La Belle Dame sans Merci” (2026), Bodo portrays a female figure dressed in white, in front of a knight, surrounded by a vast garden. The title takes up the ballad of the same name by John Keats, a clear reference to the Western literary tradition, reworked through the artist’s cultural identity.

The presence of these three artists proves how manifestations of the magnitude of Artissima are able to create a shared communication, albeit through different languages and sensibilities, between those who share the desire to question a narrative of cultural domination by reconnecting to their roots and ethnic memories, rewriting consolidated cultural representations. Their works show the power of contemporary art capable of reinterpreting history. Even where the colonial legacy is not only a trace of the past but a still present reality that continues to influence identities, territories and relationships. It is in this ability to give shape to alternative perspectives, restoring freshness to stories often told by others, that the value of these artists’ contribution to the contemporary debate lies.

Artissima 2026. 33rd Edition

31/10/2026 – 02/11/2026

Torino, Italy

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Heba Y. Amin (b. 1980 in Cairo, based in Berlin) engages with political themes and archival history, using mixed-media including film, photography, performance and installation. Her artistic research takes a speculative, often satirical, approach to challenging narratives of conquest and control. Grounded in collaborative research, fieldwork, and performative strategies her practice examines colonial histories, visual technologies, and processes of urban and landscape transformation. Heba Y. Amin is Professor of Digital and Time-Based art at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart, co-founder of Black Athena Collective, curator of visual art for MIZNA journal, and currently sits on the board of Disruption Network Lab. She was awarded the 2025 Hans-Molfenter Preis/City of Stuttgart Prize (Germany), 2022 Nordhorn City Art Prize (Germany), the 2020 Sussmann Artist Award for artists committed to the ideals of democracy and antifascism (Austria), and the 2019 NYC Field of Vision Fellowship (nominated by Oscar winning director Laura Poitras).

Mehdi-Georges Lahlou born in France in 1983) is a French-Moroccan multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans sculpture, photography, performance, collage, and video. Through this dialogue between past and present, Lahlou invites viewers to reflect on the echoes of collective history within today’s world — where postcolonial concerns and environmental issues converge in a poetic, forward-looking vision. His sculptures, between totem and self-portrait, unfold through the recurring metaphor of the palm tree narratives of filiation, migration, and resilience: the artist’s body becomes the structural spine of a date palm from which fruits emerge, as signs of continuity. His work has been presented internationally at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea (Rome, Italy), the Institut du Monde Arabe (Paris, France), the Mucem (Marseille, France), the Centre Pompidou Málaga (Spain), the Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain de Strasbourg (Strasbourg, France), the Museo de Arte Colonial (Havana, Cuba), the National Museum of Contemporary Art (Bucharest, Romania), Le Botanique (Brussels, Belgium), the Bonnefantenmuseum (Maastricht, Netherlands), the Kent State Museum (Kent, Ohio, USA), Walsh Gallery, Seton Hall University (South Orange, New Jersey, USA), and the Musée des Confluences / Dar El Bacha (Marrakech, Morocco), as well as at the Dakar Biennale (Dakar, Senegal) and the Landskrona Foto Festival (Landskrona, Sweden). His work is included in the collections of FRAC Midi-Pyrénées (Toulouse, France), FRAC Haute-Normandie (Rouen, France), FRAC Pays de la Loire (Nantes, France), and the RISD Museum (Providence, Rhode Island, USA).

Amani Bodo (b. 1988, Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo) currently living and working in Kinshasa. The artist, son of the well-known artist Pierre Bodo, started painting at the age of 10 years. In 2020 Primo Marella Gallery presented the exhibition “Africa Universe.Chapter 3, The art of storytellers. The continuation of the tradition: from Cheri Cherin (1955, Democratic Republic of the Congo) to Amani Bodo”, the third part of a group show, entirely dedicated to Contemporary African Art. This chapter was focused on the artists who have been associated with the School of Popular Painting from Kinshasa. This artistic movement, initially practiced on sacks attached onto the canvas and displayed on the streets, was born in the seventies of the 20th century in the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The movement was described by the founding artists as something that comes from the people and is for the people, thus expressing their interest in the imaginaryderiving from daily life and popular culture. The nature of Popular Painting, mainly figurative and descriptive, is visceral and complex as it criticizes, often with a vein of cynicism and irony, the social and political life of the African community. Amani Bodo takes his cue from the popular life of his native land. However, unlike Cheri Cherin, Amani Bodo deviates from the representation in comics style in favour of metaphorical and allegorical painting, rich in symbolism.