Years ago I organized a trip with a group of friends in the north of Sicily. I immediately declared my only request: see the Great Crettoan immense collided of white concrete made by Alberto Burri in Gibellina, and who holds the rubble of the city destroyed by the 1968 earthquake. Asking information, I expressed my enthusiasm to the managers of our B&B. Her reaction was of considerable irritation, saying that, in reality, that intervention did not love him at all: “The rubble of a tragic episode of our history are buried there”.
I keep this episode like mementoas I felt the weight of my involuntary lightness in approaching a work immersed in a territory; And it is precisely guided by this memory that, attracted by Burri on the cover, I started reading this volume.
Islands, art, public space. Interventions of environmental art in Sardinia and Sicily It is a book published by Postmedia Books and written by Rita Pamela Ladogana, professor of History of contemporary art at the University of Cagliari, and whose research interests mainly concern the artistic manifestations of the twentieth century, both nationally and more specifically in the Sardinian context.
From reading and a precious confrontation with the author, the novelty of this research emerged, or to bring the question of territorial identity declined in the specific context to the debate relating to art in public space isola. It is in fact through the critical lens of the island studiesinterdisciplinary research field that reflects on how the island condition influences not only the geography of a territory, but also its social and cultural dimension, that this book analyzes and rereads interventions of environmental art carried out in Sicily and Sardinia from the 1960s to today.
The value of territorial belonging in the islands stands out of this analysis as more marked than other regional contexts of our country, and in fact, although referring to interventions in two islands with very different stories, Ladogan traces a red thread that unites them all: the origin in a strong identity component and in the need for redemption by a situation perceived as marginality.
These aspects nourish and condition the choices of private or public cultural policies, which often, then as today, proved to be inadequate to the needs of the creative sector, compromising the success and continuity of these interventions; But they also influence the curatorial premises, to condition the selection of the artists and the expressive methods themselves.
Among the many cases treated, there is also the Great Crettowhose welcome by the community was immediately problematic, as evidenced by our guest, as it is also perceived as an action to cancel the material memory of the city. And so also the reconstruction of the new Gibellina marked on the model of the city-jerze, with large open spaces, immediately appeared very far from the nature of the old center, where the house-canvas report had been fundamental, and in which the community spaces were born in the alleys and the courtyards. The influence of the appaished mayor Ludovico Corrao was, in this, decisive: great connoisseur of the territory, he followed the realization of architectural and artistic interventions that should have resolved the lack of identity of the new center, constituting a new memory. He did so through the identity theme, invoking the Sicilian roots or proposing honorary citizenship, to recall artists and intellectuals and begin this cultural renewal, the only tool considered effective to overcome a perceived condition as isolation. Many responded to this call and the interventions were grandiose, but mainly of a monumental and self -referential nature.
Enrico Crispolti had already caught in the absence of a coherent planning one of the main reasons for the failure of this project. Ladogana, however, also adds the perspective of the artists, reporting the testimony of a letter sent to the mayor by Mauro Staccioli and Elio Marchegiani, in which the lack of a vision of the unitary city lucidly complain. Staccioli himself, perplexed, will not propose any intervention for Gibellina Nuova.
For Ladogan, the influence of the island condition emerges here not only from the search for initial redemption, but also precisely of the method of intervention, which most searches for the strengthening of the identity theme through the involvement of the artists, sacrificing, probably also due to the urgency of a rapid and concrete intervention, a rational design and which took into account the complexity of the territory.
Similar as a type of intervention, but in Sardinian territory, it is instead On logo de security In Tortolì (1995), an unprecedented case of research of this volume that tells another complexity, in which the need for redemption also collided with the local resistance with respect to the potential threat of cultural colonialism. The intervention was born from the desire to create temporary exhibitions of outdoor sculptures to enhance degraded areas of the city. The project, following the involvement of the Genoese gallery owner Edoardo Manzoni, who also had Sardinian origins from Mother, and the mayor Franco Ladu, became a permanent environmental project.
For Manzoni the goal was to make the “European Island of Sculpture” Region, enhancing, through a contemporary artistic proposal, also the historical and landscape riches of the territory, while Ladu, also linked to the theme of redemption, supported the project as a solution to marginality. They were therefore called artists who had already measured themselves with environmental practices, alongside the exhibitions also conferences and meetings with citizenship, to cultivate an educational process for art attentive to its reference context.
In 1995 the project was inaugurated with a great exhibition dedicated to Staccioli, whose link with Sardinia had already consolidated in the period of training in Cagliari with the “group of initiative for a democratic commitment”: he recognized this phase as fundamental, as it allowed him to expand his horizons compared to the Tuscan area of ​​origin, both thanks to the lively cultural context, and “for the influence of the body and the autonomy of the character of the Sardinian “(p. 70). The fifteen works widespread between Tortolì and Porto Frailis, in the city and in the landscape, were recognized by Cronti as an anthology of the repertoire that since the seventies had characterized its production, between plinths, spheres and middays, and also influenced the toponymy of the places, if not in a formal sense, at least for common sense: this is how, following the artistic intervention, a cross of Porto Frailis was renamed by Porto Frailis. residents “Piazza Staccioli”.
But in 1996, at the inauguration of the second year of activity, for which they were called to exhibit Ascanio Renda and Pietro Coletta, the artist Pinuccio Sciola alerted the risk of a “cultural colonization”, denouncing the failure to involve Sardinian artists; The critic Luigi Meneghelli replied, underlining the importance of promoting, rather, a cultural opening, considered, for the Sardinian artists themselves, an opportunity to break down the distances. The controversy was appealed inviting the following year Maria Lai, Rosanna Rossi, and Pinuccio Sciola himself.
Noting that the internal opposition to Manzoni’s project has inevitably led to an extremely specific evolution of the project, in the same way thiegary investigates how the island condition may have influenced even the participation models. From this perspective analyzes the operation Bind to the mountain Made by Maria Lai in 1981 in her hometown, Ulassai. Invited by the Municipality to create a monument to the fallen of the Second World War, Lai replied by proposing a monument “for the living”; Reinterpreting an ancient legend of the country that everyone knew, he tied, together with the inhabitants, the houses and the mountain nearby with a heavenly fabric ribbon.
To involve the country, the artist chose a local legend, yet another reference to the theme of identity declined, however, in the recovery of cultural roots of millennial origin, topos that the author has identified as a characteristic of the Sardinian context. Among the many reactions of the inhabitants, often skeptical, there was also an initial opposition to Maria Lai herself, testimony of the problematic impact of emigration: the artist was in fact considered guilty of having betrayed his country to move to Rome, just as there were those who managed to overcome this rock precisely for the respectful respect for the artist’s family, very well known in the country. Ladogana therefore underlines the theme of roots as relevant not only in the construction of the intervention model, as it is thanks to it that Lai was able to identify the topics of memory and identity as elements in which the inhabitants could have recognized themselves, but also in the evolution and reception, not only of this, but of all subsequent works, consolidated by the choice of the artist to remain in Ulassai.
The last part of this volume is then dedicated to the risks of the participatory processes and the possible virtuous declinations. Ladogana problematizes the theme of the artistic practices located which, in order to have a real transformative effect, must embrace one long residence and really get in touch with the places. In fact, the goal becomes to guide the communities in an awareness of their history, to acquire autonomous and renewed critical gaze, do not bring planning designed from above or by the welfare tones.
The collective Giuseppefragallery (Sulcis Iglesiente) was born from the transfer of artists to a former mining village to contribute to the social development processes of a complex territorial reality, while project islands in Palermo, a permanent and itinerant laboratory, promotes an exchange of prospects between residents and artists also coming from other contexts, in search of a shared reading of the places. Farm Cultural Park was finally born from the urgency to intervene with respect to the depopulation and state of abandonment of a remote country, Favara, an island on the Sicilian island: through exhibitions, workshops and the recovery of architectural spaces open to residents and international artists, new connections and active citizens have been born have “created a new form of pride and redemption” (p. 104).
Far from an idealization of these experiences, the volume of Ladogana therefore wanted not so much to reconstruct an exhaustive track of the Good practices To make art in public space today, but rather to introduce the theme of the island context in the contemporary debate as a significant and specific fact, to be problematized and considered not only when it comes to new interventions, but also regarding the restoration and enhancement processes that are now affecting many of the treated beings, such as the appointment of Gibellina “Italian capital of contemporary art” for 2026. In my opinion, precious ideas are also offered for visitors. Visitors, to cross the spaces with an awareness that is fundamental posture, especially in territories corroding from the impact of contemporary mass tourism.
Because, on the other hand, as Maria Lai wrote to Franco Ladu by recognizing the mayor’s great responsibility in reconciling cultural proposals and concrete needs of the communities, “doing art, doing politics, are complementary activities” (p. 72).
