Straperetana Ultramoderne 2023 – art part of the cult(ure)

Culture could manifest itself as a constant dialogue between man and nature, almost like a relationship of mutual and loving understanding between a mother and her fetus (1). The poet Andrea Zanzotto expressed this hope, which later turned out to be only an illusion.
The continuous and inextricable link between man and landscape inevitably underlies the works that we find scattered throughout the streets and buildings. Pereto, represented at the annual nomination Straperetanaan event born seven years ago in this Abruzzo village (L’Aquila) located just after the border with Lazio and selected Paula Capata as one of the headquarters Gallery of monitors.
Exhibition of this edition bears the title Mod – edited by Capata and Delfo Durantevisited until September 10 – and presents us with 30 works created by 18 artists of different generations.

Obviously, a feminist vision is emerging, as well as a general feeling and experience of history based on a long view of things and a concern for preserving details and building relationships.

The works reveal a common intention to convey stories, personal or shared: through an original point of view, they reveal to visitors a “sensory” knowledge that is therefore able to engage all our senses at the moment of realization and take us far beyond the visual approach.

Lots of work site-specificborn directly in the territory, in relation to the traditions, habits and voices collected directly from those who live there.

We find those of Anouk Chambaz, Julia Mangoni AND Sara Diaz– who explored the village and also sought impressions and views directly from the voices of its inhabitants – Lulu Nuti, Satya Strong AND Francis Ciola – who, with the help of various materials, reinterpreted the traditions and forms of the host landscape in a new way, oscillating between the voices of the present and the past.

Job Sonya Andresano – which, in a repetitive gesture, revealed by a continuous sound and enclosed in an antique piece of furniture, recalls the female condition, blocked and without an exit – and works Eliza Montessori – a book created for the event and 3 new drawings revealing a more intimate nature in which the woman appears to be the only translator and guardian, but is also “a tool of protection to avoid violence”.

No less stimulating are the works of artists who have initiated an unprecedented dialogue with the spaces of Palazzo Maccafani and Palazzo Iannucci (Casa del Prete) as well as with the outside environment.

Works Tomaso Binga, Maria Adele Del Vecchio, Beatrice Celli, Maria Lai, Ruth Beraja, Cloti Riccardi, Re Di Martino, Eva Marisaldi and Maddalena Tesser they enter into a direct relationship with the environment and, observed along this common path, stimulate a new look at everyday attitudes and gestures, as well as a rethinking of the figures and mechanisms of our culture.

At the end of the journey, there is a feeling of contact with something alive and precious. Looking back at the works encountered, it seems that each of them carries a special vitality, as if the body is every time called for participation, for self-expression.

The body is always present: sometimes clearly manifesting itself – as in the alphabet that Tomaso Binga imitated in the famous photographs taken by his friend Verita Moselles – sometimes becoming a vehicle for imaginative stories – as in the work of Anouk Chambaz, created in collaboration with Giulia Mangoni – sometimes dematerializing and is reduced to whispers and sounds of instruments, as in the works of Addressano and Beraha, or to the body that becomes a word, as in the historicized work of Cloti Riccardi.

The body is often called only by gestures of action, which is tradition and relationship – as in the works of Maria Lai, Beatrice Celli, Maria Adele Del Vecchio – or it is the concrete corporeality of materials, a plastic element that creates new restrictions. – Works by Lulu Nuti, Satya Forte, Francesca Ciola and Sarah Diaz.

Light and airy bodies, delicate but sharp, the ones we see in the works of Eva Marisaldi, while the bodies of Maddalena Tesser reach the limits of mystery in the continuous adaptation and disclosure, and instead of the corporeality of Giulia’s pictorial subjects. Mangoni is explosive, so material and enveloping.

Finally, female portraits Veronica Leffe they accompany guardian deities along the way of the exhibition, who look out from the windows and doors of the houses on which they were attached, and direct their determined gaze into the eyes of the passer-by, who finds himself passing by, ready to reveal the truth to them.

Information Straperetana Ultramodern

^Note

1. Science fiction proof. Luigi Ghirri, Andrea Zanzotto, Giuseppe Caccavallenotebooks of the Luigi Ghirri Foundation, edited by Chiara Bertola, October 2021. ↑