Inaugurated on Saturday 4 May in Udine at the MAKE space in Palazzo Manin, Fabiana Cioni’s exhibition dedicated to the Ezida people entitled Towards the Peacock Angel. Fragments from Kurdistan – Traveling with the Yazidi community. Picture diary from Şhengal and Lalişh, catalog published by Persephone Edizioni. Event contained within the Vicino – Lontano Festival born from the strong bond with the journalist writer Tiziano Terzani, the actress, Francesca Ria, will lend voice to the testimonies of the Yazidi women collected by Fabiana in 2015, exactly one year after the bloody attack by DAESH which took place in 2014 in Shengal.
On May 6th at 6.00 pm there will be a debate again in the MAKE exhibition venue at Palazzo Manin with the doctor Riccardo Pinosa busy in Shengal until last April, the artist Fabiana Cioni and the publisher Angela Galli on the topic: The resistance of the Ezidi people in Shengal
The festival
Born to a strong bond with the figure of the journalist and writer Tiziano Terzanithe near/far festival takes place every year in Udine, since 2005, in the month of May.
Meetings, debates, conversations, conferences, lessons, readings, exhibitions, shows and screenings occupy for four intense days The Old Town of the city and some of its most evocative buildings.
Scholars, journalists, writers and artists of international prestige engage with each other and with the public to analyze, from different points of view, the transformation processes underway in the globalized worldin the economic, social, cultural and geopolitical fields, with the aim of investigating the reasons, mechanisms, meanings and perspectives.
Why near/far?
“Near” and “far” are not only geographical and multicultural indicators of a planetary situation that must now bridge distances and bring worlds closer, compare the diversity of discourses, be they economic or philosophical, social or existential, in search of a language common or that possesses something common capable of orienting us a little in the general disorientation. “Near” and “far” would also like to be an individual compass, precisely the critical condition that has to do with each of us and which poses to each of us the difficulty of “living the distance”, in short – if we could – of not remaining crushed and inert under the weight of media and homogenizing logic.
Pier Aldo Rovatti, philosopher, member of the scientific committee
“Towards the Peacock Angel. Fragments from Kurdistan – Traveling with the Yazidi community. Picture diary from Şhengal and Lalişh”. Preface by the critic Giorgio Bonomi.
Towards the Peacock Angel it is the second volume of the new series NEW WORLDS À REBOURS. Works that go against the grain, rare, original, with quality photos and accompanied by equally important texts from the Persephone Edizioni publishing house.
Giorgio Bonomi from Rome but lives in Perugia, contemporary art and photography critic, curator of exhibitions and founder and director of the magazine “Titolo”. He directs the Contemporary Art Series of Rubbettino Editore, where he has published Dissemination. Explosion, fragmentation and dislocation in contemporary arta, 2009; The lonely body. The self-timer in contemporary photography voll. I and II, 2012 and 2017 and vols. III, 2022. Pino Pinelli or of dissemination, 2016.
Towards the Peacock Angel
A photographic diary of 61 images that tell aspects of life, sacred celebrations and the tragedy that struck the Kurdish Yezidi population. The publication, in addition to being a photographic work, is accompanied by texts.
“The photographs are raw, harsh but without rhetoric: destruction, rubble, choral humanity, refugee camp, rituals, moments of daily life such as school or çay and more appear in their reality […].
The harsh and sometimes chilling testimonies of Yazidi women are reported. These texts are not mere information but the result of an intense empathy that Cioni felt towards the Ezidi: the artist tried to “share” as much as possible, given the evident historical, cultural and social differences, the situation of these and she tried to bring them help starting from her photography activity, in fact she created [nel campo profughi (N.d.R.)] an art therapy laboratory based on the photographic self-portrait methodology”. From the preface by Giorgio Bonomi
Giorgio Bonomi was born in Rome in 1946, lives in Perugia. After a period of studies and writings on political philosophy, including the book Party and revolution in Gramsci, ed. Feltrinelli 1973, collaboration with “il Manifesto”, he dedicated himself to contemporary art as a critic, curator of exhibitions, essayist and founding and directing the magazine “Titolo”. He directed the Exhibition Center of the Rocca Paolina in Perugia from 1994 to 1999. He was the Director of the Zappettini Foundation (Chiavari and Milan) which deals with analytical painting. Among the more than two hundred exhibitions curated in Italy and abroad, we remember: Plessi; Beuys. Defense of Nature; the Gubbio Sculpture Biennials of 1992, 1994, 2006, 2008, 2016; 3 X Monochrom: Fontana, Manzoni, Pinelli; Painting 70. Painting painting and analytical abstraction.
He directs the Contemporary Art Series of Rubbettino Editore, where he has published Dissemination. Explosion, fragmentation and dislocation in contemporary arta, 2009; The lonely body. The self-timer in contemporary photography voll. I and II, 2012 and 2017 and vols. III, 2022. Pino Pinelli or of dissemination, 2016.
Fabiana Cioni, Ph.D at the University Institute of Architecture of Venice (IUAV), has been to the places of the Ezidi for study and research reasons. Teacher, artist and activist.
