Farewell youth

The temporary exhibition takes its inspiration from the title of the famous 1911 play written by Sandro Camasio e Nino Oxilia, Farewell youth. The original play successfully narrated the relationship between a student and one “sartina”, becoming a particularly popular cultural symbol in Turin and between the working classes of the time. Starting from this evocative imagery, the exhibition sets out to analyse the profound social transformations that have occurred in the industrial peripheries at the beginning of the Twentieth century. At that time, young men and women were struggling to conquer new spaces of independence and autonomy, developing critical cultural models towards traditional, rigid hierarchies of gender relations.

The exhibition highlights how the outbreak of the Great War represented a violent interruption of these emancipation, leading to a drastic retreat that would later be consolidated during the fascist regime. Through an approach of long term, the exhibition chooses to observe the world conflict from a peculiar perspective: that of the “home front”, focusing on the Turin suburbs. The documentary material, which includes visual references to the council houses in via Verolengo and in the presence of the Trentino refugees in 1917, offers valuable testimony on the changing status of young people and women in a rapidly changing urban fabric.