Between 2023 and 2024, the Homecoming exhibition cycle investigated the concept of identity in relation to places, exploring the idea of ‘home’ as a return to one’s origins, as a rediscovery of one’s culture or roots. With the exhibition Solstice by Claudine Doury, curated by Irene Alison and Paolo Cagnacci, the last appointment of the cycle, our journey leads us, through the images of the French photographer, to the discovery of ancient rituals but also of absolutely contemporary anxieties and instances: the relationship between human beings and nature; the dialogue between present and memory; the creative and revolutionary power of femininity; the thin border between transition, loss, change and new beginnings. An empathetic and sensitive traveller who has extensively documented regions such as Central Asia, the Crimea and Siberia in recent decades, a gifted photographer and winner of the prestigious Leica Oskar Barnack Award in 1999, Doury has for more than a decade, every 21 June, embarked on a journey that takes her from St. Petersburg to Maloyaroslavets in Russia, to the island of Lake Ives in Belarus, to Kaunas, Vilnius and the Polish and Latvian countryside, to document the rites of the solstice.
Called Kupala by the Slavs, Kupalès by the Baltics, solstice night is a traditional celebration whose roots go back to pagan festivals linked to the forces of nature and sun worship, an event that welcomes and celebrates the brief period when the northern skies reach twilight but never darkness. Forgotten in most of Western Europe, pagan sun rituals, rooted in centuries of history, are still strongly felt in the northern regions of Eastern Europe. Doury recounts them with mysterious and delicate images, poised between reality and dream, to evoke the invisible forces that move through these places in a night that seems endless and promises new beginnings, and to celebrate the expressive and spiritual power of light.