The Reflected Newlyweds. Paolo Gioli in Volterra

Exhibition promoted by Comune di Volterra, Fondazione Musei Senesi, Musei Comunali di Volterra, GIAN – Gruppo Fotografico Volterra, with the support of Fondazione Monte dei Paschi di Siena and Autolinee Toscane (mobility partner)

Paolo Gioli in Volterra, an exhibition project that ideally brings the artist back to the Etruscan city forty years after the first presentation of his works inspired by the museum’s collection. The initiative is part of the rich programme of the The Etruscans 85–25 project, promoted by Regione Toscana, celebrating the cultural season launched in 1985 and its impact on the appreciation of Etruscan heritage.

The works: Polaroids, video, and experimentation

The exhibition presents a selection of manipulated Polaroids on paper and an artist’s video, forming an intense and layered body of work. These are the same works Gioli exhibited at the Palazzo dei Priori in Volterra between 1984 and 1985, in the shows Il volto inciso and Gli sposi riflessi. Through overlapping, doubling, and transparency techniques, the artist creates a dialogue between living and sculpted faces, contemporary portraits and Etruscan masks, generating hybrid images that blend past and present, photography and memory.

The vision of Paolo Gioli

“I thought of making the ashen faces on the sarcophagi appear alive, those strangely shaped like television sets,” wrote Gioli in 1984. The artist overlays human faces onto those of Etruscan urns in an attempt to return to the “unknown dead” a new, almost living identity. The result is a visual and poetic reflection on the persistence of identity, on the image as a cultural trace, and on the power of photography as a symbolic and ritual tool.

For Fabrizio Burchianti, director of the Museo Etrusco Guarnacci, the exhibition represents “an experience of profound value,” capable of revealing the contemporary relevance of Gioli’s gaze and the originality of his approach to ancient statuary. The works, created from the Etruscan urns preserved in the museum, demonstrate how contemporary creativity can offer new readings of archaeological heritage, keeping alive the dialogue between eras and sensibilities.

Paolo Gioli was one of the most autonomous and radical Italian artists. After studying painting and a formative stay in New York in 1968, he chose photography and experimental film as his primary languages. Known for his use of the pinhole camera and for reinventing Polaroid processes — which he described as a “moist incunabulum of modern history” — Gioli’s work eludes all classification and is grounded in a continuous reflection on time, body, matter, and memory.

The Etruscans 85–25 project

The exhibition is part of the The Etruscans 85–25 project, organised by Regione Toscana in collaboration with Fondazione Musei Senesi, AMAT – Associazione dei Musei e Parchi Archeologici della Toscana, Provincia di Siena, and Segretariato Regionale del Ministero della Cultura. The aim of the project is to relaunch — forty years on — a vision of archaeology capable of connecting history, local identity, and contemporary languages, involving artists, institutions, and communities.

Exhibition information

Volterra, Museo Etrusco Guarnacci
25th July 2025 – 11th January 2026
Opening: 25th July 2025, 5:00 PM

[Cover and internal image photo credit: Paolo Gioli © Archivio Paolo Gioli]