On May 3, 2023, at the Royal Academy of Spain in Rome, the presentation of ICONA by Toni Amengual will take place.
ICONA is a visual essay created by Toni Amengual during his residency at the Spanish Academy in Rome, 2021. In this work, Amengual focuses on the city of Rome as a scenario built over millennia by power, religious and political. It is here that the image has been generated and used as a tool of social control. In this sense, Amengual visits the most important monuments and museums in Rome to photograph images that today we consider iconic in the history of art, but which were conceived with a clear purpose: social control. Either in a propagandistic way, as the political power will do, or in a moralistic way, as the religious power will do.