CHE GUEVARA tú y todos - Un viaggio immersivo nella vita di una delle icone più leggendarie della storia moderna

The Civic Archaeological Museum of Bologna will host, from 27 March to 30 June 2025, the exhibition CHE GUEVARA tú y todos, a journey into the history and life of a man who deeply marked the collective imagination of entire generations, becoming the very icon of the revolutionary: Ernesto Guevara de la Serna, universally known as Che Guevara.

The spaces of the museum in Bologna will host a significant part of the vast unpublished photographic and documentary repertoire from the archive of the Centros de Estudios Che Guevara in Havana. The exhibition will offer the public the opportunity to explore, thanks to digital and interactive tools, the crucial moments of Che Guevara's life, allowing them to discover his humanity, his ideals and his emotional ties. The historical and geopolitical events of a crucial period from the early 1950s to the late 1960s that profoundly influenced several generations will be contextualised.

The exhibition, conceived and realised by SIMMETRICO Cultura, is curated by Daniele Zambelli, Flavio Andreini, Camilo Guevara and Maria del Carmen Ariet Garcia, with an original soundtrack composed by Andrea Guerra. It is produced by Alma and the Centro de Estudios Che Guevara, whose archive was recognised as a UNESCO ‘Memory of the World’ heritage site in 2013, in collaboration with the University of Milan, the IULM University and the Settore Musei Civici | Museo Civico Archeologico Bologna, under the patronage of the Municipality of Bologna.
The realisation of the project saw the close collaboration of Che Guevara's wife, Aleida March, and his son Camilo Guevara, who died in 2022, to whom the entire exhibition project is dedicated.

Meaning of the title: tú y todos

The title of the exhibition, tú y todos, takes an intense and touching line from a poem that Che Guevara wrote to his wife Aleida before his departure for Bolivia, where he was captured and assassinated on 9 October 1967 after a long interrogation.
This title underlines the intent of the exhibition: to restore an intimate and conscious dimension to the figure of Ernesto Che Guevara, detaching him from the myth of the intransigent and fearless guerrilla fighter, constructed by the media of the time, both for and against according to the political side he belonged to. The exhibition will tell the story of the man, the political figure and the historical context in which he lived, through more than 2,000 previously unpublished documents, including letters, notes, diaries, photographs taken by him, official and private images, autographed writings and videos from the period.

A project for everyone

CHE GUEVARA tú y todos is aimed at a wide and transversal audience, with the objective of narrating an iconic and contemporary figure like that of Che Guevara. The exhibition places the visitor at the centre, directly involving him/her and making him/her an active part of the experience. Through an innovative approach to dissemination, the route aims to create an emotional connection with visitors, proposing a reflection on issues that are still topical. The visit will not be a passive journey, but an experience, in which the public will feel part of the story.

The exhibition tour

The exhibition tour is structured in three narrative levels, each of which uses specific and targeted multimedia solutions:

Historical and geopolitical context
The first narrative level, journalistic in nature, immediately introduces the visitor to the geopolitical framework of the time, laying the groundwork for understanding the context in which Che Guevara lived and acted.

Biographical
The second level, biographical, presents previously unpublished archive materials that trace the public and private events of Che Guevara's life: from his famous official speeches to his reflections on education, foreign policy, economics, the meaning of revolution and hope in the ‘New Man’.

Intimate dimension
The third, more intimate level, is developed through fragments of his personal writings, such as diaries and letters to family and friends, up to the unpublished recordings of poems Guevara composed for his wife Aleida. This level reveals the doubts, contradictions and reflections that characterised the man behind the myth.

An immersive narrative

The exhibition opens with a symbolic challenge for the visitor: to cross a ‘yellow line’. A back-projected wall of moving bands shows sweetened images from the 1950s - from Hollywood, fashion and the advertising of large consumer companies - which dissolve as the audience approaches, revealing another reality: that of poverty, disease, social injustice and lack of freedom. With a simple step, we relive the young Ernesto's dismay at the suffering of the poor and marginalised in his travels in Latin America before becoming ‘El Che’.

Returning to Argentina, Ernesto notes: ‘The person who wrote these notes died when he returned to put his feet on the soil of Argentina, and the person who tidies them up is not me; at least it is not the same inner self. That aimless wandering around our ‘Capital America’ changed me more than I thought’. (Ernesto Guevara in Notas de viaje. 1952)

Beyond this doorway, the visitor is taken on a journey through the life of Ernesto Guevara, who became ‘El Che’. Hundreds of thoughts, diaries and letters provide an in-depth exploration of one of the most complex and influential personalities of the 20th century. The narrative unfolds along a timeline enriched by historical images, films and recordings of speeches, from 1959 - the ‘Year of the Liberation’ of Cuba - to 1967, the year of the mission in Bolivia, his last adventure.
Three special installations, scattered along the route, allow the public to meet not only the historical figure, but also the man, with his reflections and emotions.

An extra-ordinary finale

The exhibition concludes with a multidimensional installation by American artist Michael Murphy, a pioneer of Perceptual Art. The work, entitled Che: portrait of Ernesto Guevara, is a three-dimensional reconstruction of Che's famous portrait, which can be transformed into his equally iconic signature.

The artistic director and curator of the exhibition, Daniele Zambelli, explains:

‘After two years of work, what remains for me of this ideal dialogue with Ernesto Che Guevara is the discovery of an extraordinary man, who dedicated his entire self to the service of a ‘strange’ idea: a humanity whose moral imperative is to evolve towards a fair society. An intellectual who transformed the utopia of the ‘new man’ into concrete action, working to build a society oriented towards the common good, a society that does not forget the disadvantaged. A man who remains marked by seeing the injustice imposed by the authorities on a multitude of men and women deprived of hope and dignity.
Behind the intellectual and the revolutionary, however, I also discovered the person: faithful to his own ideals, certainly, but also traversed by doubts and uncertainties. His choices, sometimes made with full participation, at other times with suffering, were always in the function of achieving social justice, a commitment always paid for personally. We may not completely agree with his ideas or the methods he adopted, but I still have a deep respect for a man who never hypocritically hid behind words, but gave shape to his convictions through his actions, helping to give a voice to those who had none.
I hope that the exhibition will allow the public, especially the younger ones, to establish their own ideal dialogue with the character and with that crucial historical period. Understanding the past is essential for interpreting the present'.


Tickets on https://www.ticketone.it/artist/che-guevara-tu-y-todos/