CURATOR

project & artistic director

After the dramatic earthquake in 2009, L'Aquila is now the biggest construction site in Europe.
Thanks to the collaboration with ArtBridge, a no-profit organization in New York, locals institutions and passionate citizens, in 2013 I started l'Aquila-based project "Off Site Art" and one year after I co-found the no-profit organization with the same name. Since then, as President and Artistic Director of Off Site Art OSA, I have organized and curated more than 70 temporary installations on the scaffolding of the historical center of the city. In 2019, together with artist Alessandro Brighetti, we brought in L'Aquila the format Raid and we installed 5 permanent public artworks for the project "Raid Caterpillar.

Layout for "Un cuore rosso sul Gran Sasso"

"Un cuore rosso sul Gran Sasso" by Sandro Visca

Gli Scarabocchi Di Maicol & Mirco

"Zanardi" di Andrea Pazienza

Gipi e Martina Vanda

L'Aquila city after the earthquake, 2009

I remember myself - oscillating
between rapture and horror –
while observing a reality
that I could
have never imagined before,
that I had not seen on
tv, that I had not grasped until then,
either from the
internet or from friends living in Abruzzo.
Somewhere, between the city of the past,
the one that no longer exists,
and the city of the future,
the one that is fully rebuilt,
there is a meanwhile,
a present time.
Not the one that is fleeting,
which lasts a second and is hard to catch.
This one is a present time that endures for years.
It matters and has the heavy weight
of the rubble that the citizens
of L’Aquila have piled on
wheelbarrows and moved
with their bare hands
from the city center,
during the protests against
the political class inefficiency
and the lack of aid.
Off Site Art has taken
place during this significant meanwhile.

"Waterbones" di Loris Cecchini, Raid Project

To me, these projects
show how public art
doesnʼt just have
an aesthetic role
of embellishing our cities,
but also
of strengthening communities.
Here,
artworks inject culture
and beauty
like a form of
“urban acupuncture”
overlapping an urban landscape
made of rubble.
They stir memories,
meanings
and flows of people
– as the city not only
rebuilds
its physical infrastructure,
but also its cultural identity.