Souvenir by Michael Genovese – Solo Exhibition at FVAC, Avon, Connecticut

Souvenir is a visual and conceptual exploration of how Italian-American identity is remembered, mythologized, and marketed. Through bold paintings, sculpture, installation, and interactive elements, artist Michael Genovese constructs a layered narrative around nostalgia, commodification, and belonging—while playfully questioning ideas of authorship, self-promotion, and the increasing overlap between art, marketing, and entertainment.

The exhibition’s centerpiece is a series of paintings that borrow from the visual language of 1950s travel advertisements. Using bold typography, flattened graphics, and high-contrast fields of saturated color, Genovese evokes a familiar mid-century aesthetic: cheerful, idealized, and unmistakably commercial. Each canvas mimics the glossy appeal of a postcard, souvenir label, or tourist poster—selling a vision of Italy that is more product than place. This retro design is both lure and critique: by presenting heritage through advertising tropes, Genovese exposes the superficial ways culture is flattened into symbols for easy consumption.

Central to the series is the recurring motif of fruit—lemons, grapes, bananas, olives, coconuts, and oranges—rendered in simple, graphic forms. These are the literal and metaphorical "low-hanging fruit" of Mediterranean identity: visually bright, instantly recognizable, and saturated with cliché. Lemons, for example, suggest Amalfi Coast sunshine; olives gesture toward tradition and peace; grapes evoke wine culture. But their stylized repetition and flattened presentation render them into patterns—stripped of nuance and reduced to decorative shorthand. Bananas and coconuts, which are not native to Italy, inject an element of humor and absurdity, suggesting the often arbitrary nature of cultural signifiers.

Genovese amplifies this play with meaning through misspellings of "Amalfi," rendered on the paintings as “Amafi,” “Afamli,” and other altered forms. These intentional distortions reflect not dyslexia, but rather a deliberate gesture: to point to misremembering, phonetic translation, and reinterpretation. "Afamli," for instance, slyly reads as "a family," while "Amafi" invites the viewer to consider its phonetic similarity to "mafia." In this way, Genovese nods to the legacy of stereotype—particularly the enduring link between Italian-American identity and organized crime. The artist’s own surname, Genovese, echoes that of a notorious Mafia family, underscoring how associations of ethnicity and criminality have been historically and culturally entangled. These references are not endorsements, but provocations—highlighting how such stereotypes persist as shorthand in American consciousness.

The exhibition also includes a meticulously constructed, life-size carreto cart—an ornate, traditional wagon once used in Southern Italy for festivals and transport, and now often miniaturized as a souvenir. Genovese’s version is made from salvaged materials: found plywood, antique table legs, and carriage wheels. Its surface is carefully hand-painted in vibrant colors, drawing from traditional decorative styles but substituting the usual mythological scenes with images of the local Connecticut landscape, including the nearby Heublein Tower. This fusion of “there” and “here” collapses geographical and cultural distances, anchoring inherited identity within the context of present-day place. Visitors are invited to activate the sculpture, emphasizing memory not as static display but as something living and participatory.

Beyond its nostalgic resonance, the carreto intervenes in the conventions of formal sculpture and cultural display in the 21st century. It poses critical questions about spatial politics and public address: Where is sculpture situated, and to what end? Who constitutes its audience, and what ideologies are affirmed or unsettled in the process? Rather than serving as a static emblem of tradition, the carreto operates as a site of ambivalence and activation. By inserting a folkloric object into a contemporary art context—rendered with vivid surface treatment and open to participation—Genovese disrupts the monumentality and fixity often associated with public sculpture. The work resists closure, instead framing cultural form as a living, performative construct—one that invites engagement, provokes inquiry, and destabilizes the boundaries between artifact, spectacle, and social memory.

The carreto was placed outdoors on the gallery grounds, functioning as a novelty and backdrop—recalling how tourists pose in front of culturally specific landmarks to anchor their experience. Like a sign or advertisement, it blurs the line between symbol and stage, while inviting viewers to ask whether such objects are meant to reflect identity, market it, or merely decorate space. Its visual boldness draws attention, yet its layered symbolism invites pause.

At the center of the exhibition is a painted dance floor—a wooden plinth adorned with a black-and-white checkerboard, the colors of the Italian flag, and the Sicilian Trinacria (Medusa insignia). Paired visually with the nearby Amalfi painting, the floor became a stage for impromptu performances during the exhibition. One dancer spun in circles like a ballerina in a jewel box, invoking the symbolic power of nostalgia, femininity, and theatricality. This interactive feature extends Genovese’s vision beyond the visual and into the embodied, emphasizing cultural identity as something we perform, not just observe.

At the entrance, a display of screen-printed t-shirts was available to visitors. One simply read “Souvenir.” Another echoed classic tourist merchandise with the phrase: “I visited Michael Genovese’s ART SHOW at FVAC in Avon, Connecticut Summer of 2023.” These wearable elements turn viewers into walking extensions of the exhibition, further blurring the lines between art object, branding, and memento.

Throughout Souvenir, Genovese grapples with the contradictions of cultural inheritance. The longing for the “motherland” is juxtaposed with the realization that it often exists more in fantasy than fact. For many descendants of immigrants—especially in regions like Connecticut, where Italian communities settled despite facing early discrimination from Protestant majorities—identity becomes a negotiation between pride, stereotype, and reinvention. Genovese acknowledges that this history includes both exclusion and assimilation, caricature and resilience.

The work also critiques the privilege of escape: the ability to travel, to romanticize another place, to frame memory as paradise. Advertising has long sold the dream of “somewhere better,” and Genovese mirrors this phenomenon to interrogate it. The paintings offer a portal to an idealized Italy, but ask: who gets to believe in that dream, and what gets lost in translation?

Ultimately, Souvenir stages a subtle yet pointed critique of how we perform, display, and sell the past in the present—while playfully questioning ideas of authorship, self-promotion, and the increasing overlap between art, marketing, and entertainment. By combining bright visuals, familiar symbols, and sculptural references to family and place, Genovese invites us to reflect on how culture is remembered, repackaged, and—sometimes—resold back to us as identity.

Paintings and Sculpture in the Exhibition