Parallel Worlds - Metropole/Colony: Africa and Italy - Ana Benatuil

The “Metropole/Colony: Africa and Italy” exhibition takes place on a squared room at the Frost Art Museum in Florida International University. The exhibition successfully depicts the parallel relationship and hierarchy of power between Italy’s vision and expectations towards the conquest of the African Colonies and the consequences and results that these were causing in Africa. The physical placement of the artifacts express these two parallel worlds, the four walls surrounding the small room, are mainly full of paintings and propaganda portraying Italy’s power under Mussolini’s regime promoting tourism to East Africa, also promoting jobs and expressing the benefits that the conquest would bring to Italian citizens, strategy used by Mussolini’s regime to consolidate fascist power in Italy.

On the other hand, the items on the stands along the center of the room, express the consequences of how Mussolini’s conquest was affecting Africa, in both positive and negative manners, the rapid development in agriculture and industry, the development of new towns and transportation infrastructure and the depiction of fascists on East Africa through children’s games and postcards.

The fact that Italy’s depiction of power, technology and leisure are displayed on the walls, surrounding the room, with a clear separation in height, is a representation of hierarchy of Italy over Africa translated into the built form of the exhibition. It represents how the Mussolini regime held control over the African towns and at the same time, conveying the notion of progress and growth through the creation of a tourism infrastructure, such as cruises, airlines, guidebooks, hotels, etc. 

Sketch of exhibition space viewed from above.

On the sketch provided above, it is clear how the walls are overpowering against the stands on the floor, and how it can be read as one being the consequence of the other and vice versa, which is exactly how the parallelism was happening at the time of Italy’s invasion of East Africa. The Metropole was conquering the colony but at the same time, the Metropole was being conquered all over by the fascist regime, re-affirming their power on the Mainland and reinforcing their identity as Italians. 

Title showing how the words "Metropole" and "italy" are surrounding "Colony" and Africa"

To strengthen the argument previously stated, the title of the exhibition is also an example of how the parallelism is shown, and how African colonies were immersed into Italy’s empire.