On Saturday, May 28, 2022, on the 14th National Mining Day, the photographic exhibition "URBAN METAL MINING - Industrial Visions of the Circular Economy" will be inaugurated. The evetn is organized by the Museum of Art and Mining Reserves in collaboration with the Fiori Group (a leading operator in the metal recovery industry), sponsored by RUS Resources and Waste and set up inside the Museum of Classical Art, .

The morning program will include several talks on urban mining, circular economy and sustainable development, with the intention of spreading and promoting the culture of waste recovery and recycling in "urban mining" as a sustainable alternative to the exploitation of raw materials extracted from mineral deposits.

A tour of the exhibition and refreshments will follow. The exhibition's striking images illustrate the work of the metal recovery industry, with special reference to comminution and sorting operations, highlighting their aesthetic aspects.  The exhibition consists of two sections, "raw materials" and "plants." The first section is devoted to metal scrap, depicted before, during and at the end of the recovery processes; while the second focuses on the treatment processes and illustrates the plants and environments in which metal scrap processing takes place.

In the circular economy, the implementation of which has taken on fundamental importance in recent times, the link of recovering goods and products that have reached the end of their life becomes the real fulcrum of the chain, which only with it can close in on itself. And if the recovery of existing metal makes it possible to avoid, at least in part, the need to produce new metal, it is safe to say that we are looking at a true "urban mine." In the activity of recovery, consumer goods that have reached the end of their life and become waste are processed, and from them secondary raw materials are produced for new uses. Such goods carry with them the memory of what they have been, of their function and their exterior, only to lose it and return to raw material during the recovery processes: seeing objects familiar to our daily life, civil and industrial, transformed in a context different from the usual one can be surprising, generating unexpected contrasts and revealing the intimate structure of materials. The authors wanted to document in this exhibition uncommon visions of the transformation of metal waste in industrial recycling plants, enhancing the fascination of the material and the new life it begins to breathe.

To attend the event register here

See the program (Italian Only)

Organizational support: Darica Paradiso, Curator of the Museum of Art and Mineral deposits 

Graphic design support: Fabiana Mibelli, Museum Pole intern

Thanks to Claudia Carlucci, Director of the Sapienza Museum Pole and Curator of the Museum of Classical Art and for making the exhibition possible

The exhibition will be open until July 15, 2022