La terra dei fiori

About

Vinci/Galesi

La terra dei fiori

curated by Daniele Capra

aA29 Project Room Milan

Piazza Caiazzo 3

opening February 8, 6.30pm

February 8 – March 30, 2018

aA29 Project Room is pleased to inaugurate its new space in Milan in Piazza Caiazzo 3 with the exhibition La terra dei fiori, which brings together drawings, images of the performance, the video and the film realised by Vinci/Galesi during the exhibition hosted at the Reggia di Caserta in 2017.

The exhibition, curated by Daniele Capra, completes the project that recounts the symbolic possibilities of regeneration of art on the territory of Campania, which in the last thirty years has been the subject of a violent transformation due to criminality and environmental degradation. The works and the intervention realised by Vinci/Galesi at the Reggia di Caserta bear witness to how, with small but significant actions, it is possible to transform la terra dei fuochi (the land of fires), strewn with toxic waste and hostage of the mob, to la terra dei fiori (the land of flowers), a place in which flowers grow that art uses as an expression of pleasure and spirituality. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue in Italian and English with images of the project and texts by Gabi Scardi and the curator, and a booklet containing the documentation of the performance that to place at the Reggia.

The images and videos featured in the show tell about the performance that Vinci/Galesi realised, together with two groups of bardatori from Scicli and a black Friesian stallion, which begun at the gardens of the Reggia. Dressed in a cloak made with the traditional technique of Scicli's infiorata (inflorescence), with flowers grown in the terra dei fuochi, the artists entered the Reggia through the main portico and then climbed to the main floor through the majestic central staircase of the residence. There, in the middle of the columns of the vestibule, they bent down, leaving the mantle as a present symbolically offered to the place, made up of all the good that this land can produce.

The performance alludes in a symbolic fashion the mimetic and metamorphic potentials inherent to the floral element. The simple and humble beauty of the gerberas and chrysanthemums grown in the land of fires in fact suggests the possibility of a reaction to the moral and environmental decay of a territory. It embodies the possibility of a reversal of the present condition, the rebellion against circumstances from which it seemed first impossible to even imagine a way out.

In the project La terra dei fiori, the flower is a political apparatus that art can use as an example of redemption, of overturning the status quo, of a viable path that it must encourage to imagine. It also witnesses how from extreme abandonment it is possible to sprout honesty and dignity.

Vinci/Galesi was born from the partnership between Sasha Vinci and Maria Grazia Galesi. Their collaborative work revolves around ephemeral visions, profoundly connected to the life cycle of the flower and to its rapid, inevitable decay. The floral element is in their work a restorative factor, a symbol of rebirth that takes responsibility for human's shortcomings and pays homage precisely where there is abandonment and moral negligence. Vinci and Galesi act also as cultural organisers, giving particular attention to the reactivation of forgotten urban spaces.

Sasha Vinci – Maria Grazia Galesi

La terra dei fiori

curated by Daniele Capra

opening February 8, 6.30pm  

February 8 – March 30 2018

Wed-Fri, 12.30-7.30pm

Or by appointment

aA29 Project Room Milan

Piazza Caiazzo 3

20124 Milan

www.aa29.it

info@aa29.it

+39.329.8589624

Gabriela Galati

Director

g.galati@aa29.it

+39.340.9691313