Tim Gassauer, Manu Gruber

Since 2024, the German-Italian artist duo has been exploring the question of a possible return of fascism in Europe. The starting point for their work is the Ossola Valley in the northern Italian Alps, which was liberated from fascist occupiers by Italian partisans in September 1944 and temporarily became a sovereign partisan republic for 40 days.

Drawing on the history of the resistance in the Ossola Valley, Gassauer and Gruber follow the traces of this partisan republic to its intersections with a political present that can increasingly be understood as (pre-)fascist. The research was conducted in collaboration with the “Casa della Resistenza” memorial in Verbania. In the process, they discovered photographs of a young circle of friends who, as partisans, confronted the superior German SS and Wehrmacht units with limited resources. The resulting interweaving of historical and contemporary visual contexts opens up a space for reflection that employs an ongoing critical examination of the past, in terms of its significance for the present, as a method of visual insight.

Biography

Tim Gassauer, b. 1997 in Nordhausen (DE); lives and works between Berlin (DE) and Normandy (FR). Manu Gruber, *1983 in Bremen (DE); lives and works between Berlin (DE) and Bremen (DE). Since 2024, the German‑Italian artist duo has been working with photography to examine remembrance as well as political and social traces. Their research-driven practice explores questions of power, memory, loss, and the legacies of conflict through visual narratives