Post-War: On What Remains
24.9 – 27.11.2022

Works of
Ziyah Gafić , Vincenzo Pagliuca, Nikita Teryoshin, Filippo Bardazzi

Curated by
Steve Bisson

Orari
Sunday 4:30pm–7:30pm

Lab27 inaugurates the exhibition "Post-War: On What Remains" on September 24 at 7:00 PM, featuring photographs by Ziyah Gafić, Vincenzo Pagliuca, Nikita Teryoshin, and Filippo Bardazzi.
For several months, Europe and the world have been witnessing the military offensive in the Ukrainian region. The escalation of the armed conflict, which began in 2014, has produced instability with economic and social repercussions whose full impact remains unpredictable. Online, the war unfolds live, triggering impulsive reactions and leaving little room for understanding or reflection. A production of disposable, overwhelming images emerges, one that fuels emotion but quickly disappears.
In this context, Lab27’s exhibition "Post-War: On What Remains" shifts the focus to a different plane: memory and its traces. It is an invitation to consider war not only as an event but as a process that affects society—a structural tension that crosses it, marks it, and inexorably shapes it.

Ziyah Gafić was 12 years old when the war in Bosnia began. His adolescence was marked by regular sniper fire, bombings, and hunger. This was life during the Siege of Sarajevo, the longest siege of the modern war era. Twenty years later, the boy—now an internationally renowned photojournalist and documentarian—chooses to pay tribute to his homeland, still weakened by nepotism and systemic corruption.
Heartland captures the quiet, solitude, and determination of people who carry on with life despite the very fabric of their community having been torn apart, with social rituals disrupted and thousands of bodies still being exhumed from mass graves.

Around 350 bunkers were built before the outbreak of World War II along the border with Austria, in the contested territory of South Tyrol. This vast system of fortifications was decommissioned by the army in 1993. Vincenzo Pagliuca explores the educational value of this heritage, which is rooted both in a dramatic chapter of European history and in its potential transformations for the future.
These transformations range from the organic, where nature is left to conceal the tragedy in the vegetal oblivion of time, to the Promethean, where the bunkers are repurposed for new functions, new life, always with a distinctly human purpose. From preservation that highlights architectural elements and celebrates their beauty as an heroic act, to bunkers left intact, where history is not overridden but endured—a hard memory that invites reflection.

Thousands of bunkers remain scattered across the Albanian landscape, forgotten on beaches, swallowed by urban development, hidden in vegetation, or integrated into settlements. It is estimated that around 750,000 of these remnants exist, now stripped of their original function and largely absorbed by the passage of time. The rounded reinforced concrete structures were designed in various sizes by the government of Enver Hoxha, the communist leader of the state from 1944 to 1985. Despite the immense expenditure of resources and extensive propaganda, none of the bunkers were ever used in any conflict. Filippo Bardazzi reminds us that these structures remain a vivid testament against nationalism and authoritarian regimes, which often exploit the threat of war to consolidate power and control over the population.

With "Nothing Personal", Nikita Teryoshin takes the observer behind the scenes of the global defense industry—exactly the opposite of the battlefield: a vast playground for generals, ministers, and heads of state, where deals are made over cocktails and gleaming weapons. Soldiers and corpses are either mannequins or pixels on the screens of simulators for artificial combat. The photographs were collected at 14 trade fairs between 2016 and 2020 across Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas. The Russian photographer lifts the veil of hypocrisy that often masks discussions about war, revealing the global and inescapable nature of the arms industry and the ongoing arms race.

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