Didascalia e mentalità coloniale: la complessità divulgativa di un testo breve

In the often conflicting relationship between scientific writing and educational writing, the caption represents a peripheral element, but useful in order to see a complex device at work. It does not coincide with the title of a piece, but can enrich its understanding with a broader and more discursive form. However, precisely because of its framing and anchoring strength, it can be also misused, as evidenced by two emblematic photographs (the Madonna of Bentalha by Hocine Zaourar and the Funeral Vigil in Kosovo by Georges Mèrillon) which summarize the ease with which typically Western semantic grids force an imagination by colonizing it.Precisely to prevent paintings and drawings from containing words deemed offensive, racist or sexist in their caption, some important international museums (including the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the National Museum of Denmark and the Prado in Madrid) have promoted updating projects for thousands of works of art that are affected by the “colonial mentality”.