Mustafa Sabbagh. XI Commandment: You shall not forget

About

It will be the large industrial ZAC ai Cantieri Culturali alla Zisa archaeology area – located in Palermo, Sicily - to host the first retrospective exhibition of Mustafa Sabbagh, whose inauguration is scheduled for Saturday, May 21, 2016.

The exhibition, promoted by the Department of Culture of the City of Palermo, carries on the brand new programming season, launched last year, which soon brought to national and international attention the ZAC area as «a place of reference for contemporary art in the south of Europe and in the heart of the Mediterranean», in the words of the City Councillor for Culture Andrea Cusumano, «an exhibition centre that increasingly is strengthening its powerful character thanks to the action generated by great masters of contemporary art».

A season of exhibitions inaugurated by the solo show of Mauro D’Agati curated by Gerhard Steidl, followed by the evocative anthological exhibition dedicated to Regina José Galindo, to continue with the great retrospectives of Hermann Nitsch and Letizia Battaglia. Programming period that will be enriched with several other important contemporary art projects during the current year, prior to the main event which will bring Palermo to the fore as one of the contemporary art capitals in 2018, thanks to the famous international art biennial Manifesta 12.

The invitation addressed to Mustafa Sabbagh confirms, on the part of the Administration, the strong and coherent commitment to build a cultural programming mindful of human rights such as of great challenges of the current millennium’s beginning, bringing back in the frontline imperishable questions concerning the entire mankind, doing so through great names of international contemporary art.

«The city of Palermo welcomes Mustafa Sabbagh at ZAC, in him recognizing a common genetic code: » says the Mayor Leoluca Orlando, «the one of a tightrope walker which wants to learn to fly not forgetting the risk of the fall, through the language most suitable to himself: the artistic one. Today more than ever we need to reconnect our roots to our wings. We need to hold the awareness of our history, of our traditions and of our culture, while nurturing the ambition to fly through the acceptance and the courage to choose our own identity - supreme act of freedom».

2000 square meters for a former industrial hangar dating back to the early twentieth century, in which there will be exposed more than 75 photographic artworks among Sabbagh’s most famous ones, 10 video artworks and three new site-specific video-installations, as well as the photographic installation which has been acquired by the roman MAXXI Museum of XXI Century Arts’ permanent contemporary art collection, here presented in preview - the same as several unedited artworks that the artist has chosen to baptize in Palermo.

In the idea of the artist, which stands out as the exhibition’s curator too, ZAC will be designed as a contemporary schizophrenia’s container, a large closet living on its disorder and its owner’s psychosis; metaphor for a disoriented humanity, schizophrenic in concealing his own fears, each one here catalogued by Sabbagh. A humankind which is forgetting its own humanity, its individual or social urgency of integration, asking for a social duty as a secular commandment starting from Palermo: You shall not forget.

You shall not forget  in Onore al Nero, photographic series that made Sabbagh worldwide renowned, personal reflection and social challenge moving from each one’s individual dark side, subverting conventions through #000’s multidimensionality, and recalling history of art by means of its own reinterpretation.

You shall not forget  in Candido, unedited project, secular absolution granted by those who know how to share the blame through pristine eyes - and bloody hands - of a child, as in Das Unheimliche, in Freudian memory, in which blood stains the adult expectation regarding the different.

You shall not forget  in Chat Room, love letter/symphony of pain from a poor fellow-Christ to a poor devil-Judas, and in Dark Room, rediscovery of innocence through a voyeuristic act.

You shall not forget  in anthro_pop_gonia, video-installation also unedited in Italy, Ariadne's thread from the history of Greek mythology to the history of contemporary vices.

You shall not forget  in Made in Italy © - Handle with care, cynical slap in the face of questions whispered, not shouted - as all the revolution’s harbingers ones should be. What’s the true meaning of foreign body  within an infected by obtuseness society? Useless attempting to forget it, in front of the seriality of a crime perpetrated by man to man, drowned in the black of the installation 09.2015: 3944 - specially conceived for Palermo.

As for Palermo, to highlight its soul deeply steeped in art and contamination, the artist has set up a collaboration with the prestigious Sicilian galleries FPAC Francesco Pantaleone Arte Contemporanea and Rizzuto Gallery, internationally appreciated realities thanks to their recognizable research - different in their artistic semantics, common in their high aim-related quality, where he decided to exhibit two unedited artworks, as if they were two connective synapses to discover into the reticulated nervous system of the city; works of art thought in relation to the peculiarities of the two spaces in which they are welcomed. A triangulation not to forget  that 'diversity' is another way of defining ‘richness’.

«A schizophrenic does not forget; a schizophrenic accumulates», writes the artist, «as in a multiple personality disorder, as in a zapping out of control». In the concept of this new exhibition design, works of art by Mustafa Sabbagh rebel against the predictability of a philological order, to break into inescapable contradictions.

DATA SHEET

XI COMMANDMENT: YOU SHALL NOT FORGET

anthological exhibition of MUSTAFA SABBAGH

FROM MAY 21st TO JULY 17th, 2016

OPENING: SATURDAY, MAY 21st, H. 6:30 PM

ZAC Zisa Zona Arti Contemporanee

Cantieri Culturali alla Zisa, st. Paolo Gili, 4, Palermo

from tuesday to sunday, from 9.30 am to 6.30 pm

phone: +39 091 8431605 | email: museispaziespositivi@comune.palermo.it

monography: Mustafa Sabbagh. XI commandment: you shall not forget 

limited edition of 601 copies + 40 collector’s edition with unedited artwork signed by the artist in exclusive circulation

hardcover, 344 pp., 173 illustrations, isbn code #978 88 98120 86 4

realization: Typography Altedo | graphic design: Aspirine.co.uk

publishing house: Danilo Montanari Editore

editorial coordination: Fabiola Triolo

textus receptus [in alphabetical order]: Marcello Carriero, Andrea Cusumano, Marina Dacci, Fabio De Chirico, Antonio Mancinelli, Leoluca Orlando, Giulia Pedace, Antonella Purpura, Davide Sarchioni, Fabiola Triolo, Peter Weiermair

exhibition realised thanks to the fundamental support and collaboration by:

City of Palermo - Department of Culture

City of Palermo - Museums and Exhibition Spaces Chief Management

Centro Studi Storici e Umanistici della Città del Sole [Cosenza]

FPAC Francesco Pantaleone Arte Contemporanea [Palermo]

Rizzuto Gallery [Palermo]

Academy of Fine Arts of Palermo

Kontatto [Bologna]

Tipografia Altedo [Bologna]

One of Those - tracks for humans [Parma]

« A schizophrenic does not forget.

A schizophrenic accumulates »

MS