Author Description

The exponential development of digital technologies, the advent of social networks, and big data have progressively and inexorably changed our society. We are witnessing the collapse of philosophies of social and urban sharing and the establishment of a new regime that in the name of security is stripping us, with our consent, of every intimate and personal space. The exhibition Please Come Back. The World as Prison? starts out from these considerations to investigate our contemporary society. Control and power systems are explored both physically and metaphorically, seeking an answer to the question: What would we like back in our lives from the "paradise lost" of the modern age? Published on the occasion of the eponymous exhibition at the MAXXI museum, this catalogue features more than fifty works by twenty-six artists that treat prison as a metaphor for the contemporary world, and the contemporary world as a metaphor for prison: technological, hyper-connected, shared, and ever more closely controlled.