Paint your own Village is, after Home Sweet Home – exploring living spaces, the second chapter of long-term research on the theme of inhabiting, which will accompany the artistic programming of KORA-Contemporary Arts Center for the next years.
The exhibition, curated by Paolo Mele and Claudio Zecchi, is the first of three set up that will take place over the course of the year with the intention of integrating a more complex vision through a large and plural body of voices that will be unfold through different formats such as masterclasses, talks, screenings, and performances.If the chapter on the house intended to investigate the institutional dimension of a Contemporary Arts Center devoted to research and production, that on the Village aims to reflect on what does mean to make cultural production in a liminal area or a small center.
The public art workshop held at KORA in the summer of 2021, coordinated by the duo of artists Bianco-Valente, was the key to begin to systematize a broader reflection on the potentiality offered by a village that seeks to transform its limits into points of strength.
The result of the workshop is a mural entitled A chi appartieni, signed collectively by the participants and made at the Istituto Comprensivo Corigliano d’Otranto-Melpignano-Castrignano de’ Greci and the permanent work Parla del tuo Villaggio in Bianco-Valente. This work, a LED writing installed on the pediment of the west entrance of Palazzo de ‘Gualtieriis, gives the title to the entire exhibition and represents at the same time a statement regarding the intention to open and make organic the cultural proposal of the Art Center within the territory in which it operates.
The writing starts from a quote by the Russian poet Lev Tolstoj: “If you want to be universal, paint your own village.” A phrase by which is meant that taking care of a small village located in an ideal marginal line, means taking care of the human life in its essence, its extremes, and, therefore, its culture.
If the title of the exhibition is inspired by the work by Bianco-Valente, two books are its theoretical basis: Realizable Utopias (1974) by Yona Friedman and Aldilà delle isole galleggianti/ Beyond floating islands (1985) by Italian theater director Eugenio Barba. The books intend to investigate the potential utopian thrust that resides in small groups, in “marginal movements” and in the force of collective work (or collectively activated).
The artists involved in this first setup, which includes works already existing but revisited for the occasion such as Sgarida / Voice of the Valley by Enzo Umbaca or untitled [anarchitecture] by Andrea Nacciarriti, or new productions such as the video installation by Theodoulos Polyviou and Alfatih According to some and Giuseppe De Mattia’s Fatterelli, nurture the idea of inhabiting opening up to wider possibilities in which reality and fiction are integrated maintaining a continuous dialectical relationship between them.
The first setup will last until the 18th of November 2022
Artists:
Bianco-Valente, Filippo Berta, Carlos Casas, Francesco Cavaliere, Luigi Coppola, Giuseppe De Mattia, Alessandra Eramo, Claudia Losi, Theodoulos Polyviou e Alfatih, Andrea Nacciarriti, Enzo Umbaca, Marco Maria Zanin.
Performance: Alessandra Eramo
Permanent artwork: Bianco-Valente
Collective Murales*:
Grazia Amelia Bellitta, Paolo Bini, Alice Caracciolo, Alice Di Nanna, Elena Eugeni, Sara Fiorentino, Rebecca Fuso, Nicola Guastamacchia, Vincenzo Luchena, Mariantonietta Clotilde Palasciano, Rossana Viola, Apo Yaghmourian
* Collective Murales is a project supported by Comune di Castrignano de’ Greci, coordinated by Bianco Valente, produced and curated by Ramdom, realized by 167/B street on maggio 2022 with the uspport of Regione Puglia – “Street Art – La cultura si fa strada”
Graphic project curated by Grazia Amelia Bellitta
