In the streets of Naples, where history and chaos intertwine, the walls of Thomas Dane Gallery this winter carry us far beyond familiar boundaries, into artworks that transform into dreamlike atlases. Running from 3 February to 2 May 2026 and curated by James Lingwood, the “Atlante” exhibition reimagines the world not merely as geographical data, but as a field of imagination where memory, desire, and politics are deeply interwoven. The exhibition takes its title from the iconic early 1970s works of Italian artists Claudio Parmiggiani and Luigi Ghirri, who detached maps from their conventional functions and turned them into vehicles for dreams and personal discovery.
This selection carries the legacy of Parmiggiani and Ghirri into the present day, gaining depth through Akram Zaatari’s paintings that treat the Mediterranean not as a fixed landmass but as a fluid space of constant movement—of people, ideas, and goods. Another artist who bends the rigid rules of cartography is Anri Sala, who merges the borders of nation-states with the forms of marine creatures, blurring the line between the “natural” and the “artificial.” Igshaan Adams, meanwhile, combines satellite imagery with weaving to transform the “paths of desire” in Cape Town’s contested public spaces into monumental tapestries embroidered with golden threads, stitching together the city’s collective memory.
Emma McNally’s graphite drawings turn every kind of motion—from tectonic shifts to atomic vibrations—into a staggering form of cartography, drawing a portrait of today’s geopolitical storms. In contrast to this external turmoil, Tatiana Trouvé constructs dreamlike landscapes of inner worlds and the “forgotten” by starting from the abstract effects of bleach on colored paper. One of the exhibition’s most poignant stops is offered by Teju Cole: photographing the chalk traces left on erased blackboards in Harvard lecture halls, Cole likens these accidental marks to celestial maps, leaving behind a silent question about whose voice is heard and whose is silenced in our noisy world.
For the residents of Apartment No:26, “Atlante” is more than an exhibition; it is an intellectual journey in which each artist remaps the world, memory, and silence with their own compass. Losing oneself among the pages of this new atlas presented by Thomas Dane Gallery, beneath the winter sun of Naples, will be one of the most inspiring paths leading into the spring of 2026.
