Matera (askanews) – There is also the desire to make known the identity and deepest roots of the territory behind the works of 44 Matera craftsmen-artists exhibited in one of the historic places of the city of Sassi, the Le Monacelle boarding school. Over the five days, the “Fucina Madre” exhibition, the event organized by the Apt and the Basilicata Region, attracted tourists, citizens and enthusiasts around a mosaic of unique pieces, the result of the creative reinterpretation of the Lucanian tradition: from ceramics to art goldsmith, from woodworking to fabrics, from digital art to the recovery of manufacturing traditions.
Fucina Madre is a melting pot of local excellence that aims not only to offer tourists aspects of the daily life and culture of Matera in a deeper and less obvious way but also to revitalize a sector of the productive world that is looking for new market outlets. The event, now in its third edition, has among its objectives that of contributing to managing the rapid transformation of the city, in the constant search for a balance between the impetuous tourist development of recent years and the risk of obscuring its identity.
Palmarosa Fuccella, creator and curator of Fucina Madre: “The idea was born in 2017. My desire was to finally be able to create a format that would give visibility to the extraordinary artisan production that Basilicata has. Because we have a tradition in many production sectors: from those of ceramics, iron processing to wood processing which over time has evolved, there was a lack of a place, a format that was able to put together an integrated project, that was able to bring artisans together and above all that. could connect the production of these artefacts of great narrative value with territorial promotion, with the promotion of the landscape”.
At a national level, the turnover around the souvenir market is 700 million euros. How can artistic craftsmanship contribute to the development of tourist destinations? Elisa Guidi, coordinator of Artex: “Artistic craftsmanship is an element that is highly sought after by tourists and also by tour operators and also by specialized journalists precisely because it contributes to giving a more identifying image of places, to suggesting experiences of visiting methods that differ a little from those that are usually carried out, as well as seeing a reality that is an expression of the historical, artistic and social tradition of the territories themselves”.
In the digital and dematerialization era, the relationship between people and things changes. And the objects of everyday life, experts observe, become somehow familiar, almost “friends”. They are the souvenirs of the 21st century. Christian Caliandro, historian of contemporary art at the Academy of Florence: “We can understand the souvenir as a friendly object because in fact it is part of those objects with which we establish a truly emotional relationship, they are the objects that accompany us, that catalyze our emotions , our memories. They are the objects that greet us when we leave the house and that welcome us when we return and this is even more important today because, as Byung-chul-an tells us, the things we are talking about, that is, these objects still anchor us. to being, whereas digital information constitutes only a simple constant input which however then vanishes immediately afterwards”.
Thanks also to the shows, performances and concerts in the Fucina Madre program, almost five thousand responded to the initiative, in a sold-out weekend in May for the European Capital of Culture 2019.
