I Am Exceptional: The Millennial Experience. Finding one’s identity
Curated by José Medina, Martina Saltamacchia, Carolina Brito, Amy Sapenoff. With Monica Canetta, Federica Fromm, Jonathan Ghaly, Emily Marsolek, Beth Nelson, Vincent Petruccelli, Laurence Rivest, Stephanie Stockman, Emily Wurzler.
We Millennials – the generation born between the beginning of the ‘80s and the 2000s in America – are defined by an epic desire of great things, of success, of changing the world, and of being unique and exceptional. But faced with this momentum, many find ourselves discouraged. The smiling image posted on our Facebook page proves to be ephemeral, and once again the loneliness prevails. We have a hunger for a big and impossible “I,” and live eternally disappointed in its fruitlessness; the happiness promised to us is continually postponed. However, the difference between our desire for greatness and the frustration of reality is the starting point for the discovery of our humanity. Thus, we are forced to confront the question of what really gives meaning to life.
The exhibition is the result of six months of work during which 75 young people from the United States and Canada embarked on a close comparison of their own experiences and some basic text by Luigi Giussani. They tried to understand if that proposal was still valid today. Month after month, the small group Skype video calls and Facebook and Twitter posts became the scene of an unexpected overflow of stories, surprises, and discoveries. The exhibition traces their path, it offers to and invites the visitor to embark on the journey along with them.
