Resistance and Pride: The Murals of Orgosolo, Sardinia (original) (raw)
Related papers
Solidarity and Social Engaged Art in 1970s Italy
Kristine Khouri and Rasha Salti (Eds.), Past Disquiet: Artists, International Solidarity, and Museums in Exile, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw and University of Chicago Press., 2018
In 1978, twenty-eight Italian artists donated works to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) on the occasion of the International Art Exhibition for Palestine held in Beirut in the spring of the same year. As was the case with other artworks donated to the PLO by artists from countries around the world, many were said to have been destroyed during the bombing of the city during the Israeli invasion of 1982. Only pictures of the works, printed in the exhibition catalog, remain to testify to this act of international solidarity. Leafing through the pages dedicated to the Italian participants, one encounters oil paintings and drawings, etchings and graphics – some figurative, others displaying abstract forms. Most of the works were donated by artists who were less well-known internationally, and even to the Italian public of the time. Nevertheless, there are some recognizable names, such as those of realist painters Renato Guttuso and Ernesto Treccani, abstract artist Carla Accardi, and sculptor Giò Pomodoro – artists who came to the fore in the 1950s and 1960s, and were acknowledged as masters in the 1970s. Other, younger and lesser-known participants belonged to a network of artists who used to gather in Rome at the gallery Il Gabbiano – a promoter of neo-figurative, socially committed trends – or at the office and exhibition space of the collective L’Alzaia. This essay partly retraces the story and creative practice of this network of artists; however, a stylistic comparison or art-historical comment upon the works they produced and donated to the PLO in 1978 does not constitute its primary scope. Rather, it will try to unfold the rationale at the core of this gesture of international solidarity, and will expand on the concept of “solidarity” itself, as it was differently understood and put into practice by a number of Italian artists and collectives, but also by cultural institutions such as the Venice Biennale.
Drawing upon international literature about breaking coloniality by removing its monuments that was inspired by movements such as ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ and ‘Black Lives Matter’, I address what can be defined a counter-case. While confirming the reasons for contesting the symbols of oppressive powers, this case exposes an alternative tradition of monuments that were not erected by states, churches or colonial companies but by combative workers. I refer to the some of the dozens of anarchist statues and marble plaques that are disseminated in Carrara (Italy) and in the surrounding villages to keep memory of facts and figures of local workers movements and antifascist resistance. The Italian capital of marble, Carrara is also a historical stronghold of class-struggle anarchism and anarcho-syndicalist unions of marble workers. These monuments often correspond to places of popular sociability in specific squares, neighbourhoods or villages, and are still places of memorial contentions. Based on the analysis of documents from Italian anarchist archives and on numerous field visits, this paper also extends literature on the material turn in cultural and historical geography, analysing the symbolic and material relevance of Carrara marble matter for local workers. I finally call for a militant historical geography of monuments, one that can be relevant to political and societal debates by boldly and outspokenly saying which statues must fall and which must stand.
Graffiti and Street Art Scientific Journal (GSA), 2023
This article deals with the artistic practice of the Italian street art collectives Res Publica Temporanea and Collettivo FX in Catania, Sicily, which has so far been neglected by academic research. The results of this study are the outcome of a field trip in April 2023 by invitation of the artists. The article recaps their work in different areas, each of which marks problematic developments in the city of Catania (San Berillo, Librino, Palestra Lupo). The case study is embedded in the discourse of critical research that considers street art in general aesthetically and ideologically exhausted. Accordingly, in this article, I use the term 'bad' in an ambiguous way pointing to its implications in processes of gentrification and commercialization. At the same time the results show a form of street art that appears also formally as 'bad' as the collectives use poor materials and an often rough style in contested areas of Catania. The selection of these neighborhoods in combination with social activism developed in consultation with the residents echoes the very roots of street art in the 1960s, the context in which the term first appeared. Therefore, I would like to present their practice as a medium that differs clearly from contemporary forms of legal muralism and as a critical practice to the neoliberal urban space.
Artists Refusing to Work: Aesthetics Practices in 1970s Italy
2015
This essay will explore how radical art practices intersected with political activist stances during the 1970s in art projects situated in the urban environment that actively engaged audience participation. Artists’ abandonment of institutional art spaces prompted them to expand their art practice into the city’s streets and piazzas. Three specific artists projects will be analyzed in relation to Autonomia ’s alternative critical attitudes: Ugo La Pietra’s Conquista dello spazio (Conquest of Space) created in Milan in 1971, Franco Summa’s NO carried out in Pescara’s city center in 1974, and Maurizio Nannucci’s Parole/mots/word/woter from 1976.