Illustrious Witnesses

Potenza, 2013. For a Work of collective self-awareness.

The installation

INSTALLATION, 80 x 100 cm, on Viale Dante, November–December 2013
Digital photocomposition – writing in red and black on white
The work is paired with the nation: Palestine
See also on the blog: Illustrious Witnesses – Installation and Illustrious Witnesses – Details

Enjoy your walk!

With the support of two Illustrious Witnesses such as Jesus and Mary, the Work stresses the urgency of reawakening feelings of solidarity and generosity towards every person in need, regardless of skin colour or economic and social status – indeed, respect and help for the most disadvantaged peoples, in the name of our common belonging to Humanity.

This people honours me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men…

(words of the prophet Isaiah, in Matthew 15:7)

Mary and Jesus are the fundamental figures of Christianity. They are also direct models of identification: every distance of space and time is in fact cancelled, since Jesus and Mary are perceived as real presences in one’s own life.

We therefore hope that respectfully calling them as witnesses and as a mirror of contemporary conscience may help to prompt reflections useful for an urgent personal and collective evolution.

They think they see but do not see, they think they hear but do not hear, they think they understand but do not understand. Matthew 13:13.

Ever relevant, these words stand as a stern warning to all those who do not live up to the spirit that inspires that religion, founded on revolutionary values such as love, brotherhood, forgiveness, Peace, non-violence, the right to equality, generosity – values that Jesus himself fully embodied, inviting us to put them into practice.

To weak human logic, the word of Jesus seems hard to achieve, because it clashes with the opportunistic logic of the world. Far from conformist, wholly and deeply in solidarity with so-called non-EU migrants, He would declare himself one of them too – and not only because he was born of Mary in Bethlehem, in Judea, in that remote province of the Middle East which the Romans called Palestine.

November–December 2013, on display on Viale Dante in Potenza
Event “Basilicata Bridge on the Mediterranean”, organised by Art&venti 2012 and Yinsieme
Event on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/234078066752140/
See also the dossier eXtra.

Preview: Basilicata Bridge on the Mediterranean

Exhibition

“Basilicata Bridge on the Mediterranean”, event organised by Art&eventi 2012 – Pinacoteca Provinciale, Potenza
Opening on Wednesday 13 November at 5.30 pm

ILLUSTRIOUS WITNESSES, for a Work of collective self-awareness
INSTALLATION, 130 x 400 cm
Digital photocomposition – writing in red and black on white – tissue-paper boats and figurines of Jesus and Mary on a dramatic Sea / Red Ribbon

The work clearly refers to the dramatic events that bring to the fore – once again – hundreds of migrants fleeing war, hunger and torture, dangerously crossing the Mare Nostrum in fragile boats, reaching our shores with only the strength of desperation and a hope – perhaps their only one – of salvation.

Many of them lose everything there, even their lives.

With the support of two Illustrious Witnesses such as Jesus and Mary, the Work stresses the urgency of reawakening feelings of solidarity and generosity towards every person in need, regardless of skin colour or economic and social status – indeed, respect and help for the most disadvantaged peoples, in the name of our common belonging to Humanity.

In this Work I once again use my fundamental stylistic signature, the Red Ribbon, protagonist of many of my performances and installations.

Usually a symbol of the vital Energy flowing in the bodies of living beings and in that of Mother Earth – The Rhythm of Fire, The Web – and at times crushed and mortified by our indifference – Stone Document, Potenza –

this time the Red Ribbon symbolises the Mare Nostrum, reddened by the countless lives lost in it during tragic crossings in fragile boats, in conditions at the limits of humanity which, still today, in the third millennium, human folly – the producer of war, abuse, tyranny, poverty… – makes possible.

More information: https://www.facebook.com/events/201569456693783/

The opening

INSTALLATION, 140 x 400 cm
Digital photocomposition – writing in red and black on white – tissue-paper boats and figurines of Jesus and Mary on a dramatic Sea / Red Ribbon

The work clearly refers to the dramatic events that bring to the fore – once again – hundreds of migrants fleeing war, hunger and torture, dangerously crossing the Mare Nostrum in fragile boats, reaching our shores with only the strength of desperation and a hope – perhaps their only one – of salvation.

Details

…while the sea, still crimson with the blood of so many migrants,
continues to be furrowed by their tissue-paper boats
Those migrants are in truth Jesus and Mary