The work has as its subject the historic Colonia Scarciglia which stands on the sacred promontory of Santa Maria di Leuca.

Symbol of the economic boom, the first summer colonies were born in the 1800s as a therapeutic shelter for children suffering mainly from bone or joint tuberculosis. Today they are almost completely extinct in their function, mainly due to the economic difficulties of the local authorities, abandoned holiday structures remain scattered throughout the territory, almost as if to mark the different landscape places: mountain, marine, urban and rural. Some of these, over time converted mostly into hotels or cultural facilities, others abandoned to their own devices, take on the time that acts on them as evidence of a memory that has almost completely vanished.

This is the case of the Colonia Scarciglia of Santa Maria di Leuca. The building, despite the state of decay in which it is currently in, even after the various restoration works, still carries with it a strong expressive charge.
“Imaginary holidays” was an action that evoked, on the one hand, the temporary holidays carried out inside the building and, on the other, the “contemporary” failure and its social utopias.

For his intervention, the artist created a momentary smoky mass that concealed the large structure, contrasting the viewer’s point of view with the surrounding landscape. Coclite has acted in an attempt to unite the two landscape dimensions, one anthropized and the other virgin, confusing its features, arriving at a momentary and ideal cancellation of the disused building.

IMAGINARY HOLIDAYS, HD Video, 2014, 06:01.

IMAGINARY HOLIDAYS, digital photo on polijet, iron structure, 160x200x50 cm.