Visus Visus
Friday 24 January 2025
6.30 PM
MAST.AUDITORIUM
AUTHOR'S TALK

RICCARDO FALCINELLI
VISUS
STORIE DEL VOLTO DALL’ANTICHITÀ AL SELFIE 

(EINAUDI, 2024)

IN CONVERSATION WITH MARCELLA TERRUSI, PHD IN PEDAGOGY

By posting selfies on Instagram we pose the same problems that every artist and communicator in History has posed: trying to make a face more heroic, authoritative, even divine. Or perhaps give it moral values, like the Renaissance painters, who portrayed rulers next to a column or curtain to express majesty and prestige. The face is the part of the body most subject to attributions of meaning: although we tend to consider them something “natural,” faces are always a cultural construction. From Alexander the Great to Rita Hayworth, from Elsa from Frozen to the Kinder baby, from the icon of Christ to the photos on our grandparents' tombstones, with immense depth of analysis and narrative verve, Falcinelli invents a “faciology,” calling into question art, semiotics, neuroscience, political history, fashion and cosmetics. Because the face we construct for ourselves can determine the life we will lead.

The book contains more than 600 color images.

As part of the review Le Voci dei Libri, in collaboration with Coop Alleanza 3.0

FREE ADMISSION BY RESERVATION



Riccardo Falcinelli is an Italian graphic artist and designer. For more than twenty years he has curated graphics for some of Italy's leading publishing houses, including Einaudi, Disney, Laterza, Zanichelli, and Harper Collins. He has taught “Basic and visual design” at the Faculty of Industrial Design at La Sapienza and since 2012 he has taught “Psychology of perception” at Isia Roma Design. He has published several essays on the relationship between design and perception including: Guardare. Pensare. Progettare. Neuroscienze per il design (Stampa alternativa & Graffiti, 2011); Fare libri (minimum fax, 2011); Critica portatile al visual design (Einaudi, 2014); Cromorama (Einaudi, 2017), Figure (Einaudi, 2020), Visus. Storie del volto dall’antichità al selfie (Einaudi, 2024).

Marcella Terrusi, PhD in Pedagogy, conducts research in the field of childhood cultures, history of literature, and international children's publishing. Her scientific interests turn to images and the formation of the imaginary in relation to topics such as outdoor education - or outdoor education, fashion, the child body and sport, the right to reading and citizenship. Scientific consultant of “Bologna Children's Book Fair,” activist of “IBBY - International Board on Books for Young People,” promoter of inclusion projects, has lectured in Italy and abroad, in foreign universities.

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