IED Firenze presents “Pathos Formulas” An archive of images and fashion arrives at the former Teatro dell'Oriuolo
Where do the images that inhabit our present come from? It is from this reflection that Pathos Formulas was born, a project presented by IED at the former Teatro dell'Oriuolo on the occasion of Pitti Uomo 110. Curated by Francesca Gavin, editor-in-chief of EPOCH Review and a reference figure on the international curatorial scene, the exhibition brings together the work of seventeen students from all campuses of the IED Group to build an open dialogue between fashion, visual arts, publishing and contemporary research.
More than just an exhibition, Pathos Formulas is configured as a creative ecosystem in which fashion design, styling, photography, video, illustration, sound design, graphic design, textile and interior design coexist within the same narrative. Fashion becomes the starting point for questioning the way in which images, symbols and gestures cross time, change shape and continue to produce meanings.
The title of the project borrows the concept of Pathosformel developed by the art historian Aby Warburg, according to which some forms of expression survive the ages, constantly re-emerging within different cultural contexts. A pose, an emotion, a symbol or a narrative tension can cross centuries of history and re-emerge in the present in new guises.
It is precisely this idea of transmission and transformation that guides the exhibition. The exhibition space takes the form of an open archive, where the past is not simply preserved but continuously reactivated. Florence, a city deeply linked to Warburgian thought, becomes the ideal context for a reflection on images as living organisms, capable of migrating between languages, disciplines and generations.
Benedetta Lenzi, director of IED Florence, stated: «For IED, Pathos Formulas brings to light a way of working in which disciplines engage in dialogue and intertwine. The project takes shape through an open process, built on relationships and connections across different timeframes. It is a space for dialogue, an active surface, where images become tools for exploring the space between what we recognize and what remains to be defined.»
Nine projects are located within the space. Each work stems from the encounter between different design paths, relating fashion research with the languages of photography, video, illustration and visual communication. Holding together the entire experience is an original soundwork that runs through the exhibition. At the same time, an editorial project organizes the entire journey in a modular archive, conceived as a structure in continuous growth.
The exhibition is also part of the celebrations for the sixtieth anniversary of IED, marked by the theme Plural Intelligences. The title explores the multiple forms of knowledge and cultural production through public programs, editorial research and interdisciplinary design practices. In this context, the third issue of the journal Notes on Plural Intelligences, entitled Future Memories, is also presented, which includes an interview dedicated to Francesca Gavin.
Because if today machines can catalog data, reconstruct stories and generate images, memory continues to be born in shared rituals, relationships and collective experiences. Archives, in this perspective, are not static repositories of information, but living organisms that allow us to understand not only how we remember, but above all why we need to do it.