Antonio Presti: Art installations of Librino
Over the last 15 years Antonio Presti, the founder of Fondazione Antonio Presti – Fiumara d’arte, has worked with the residents of Librino on art installations which do not only beautify the area but also unite the residents that live there. About “70 thousand people live in Librino, a model district of Catania designed by Kenzo Tange in the 1970s, degraded to a forgotten suburb due to the failure to provide all the services that were designed for this new town.” [1]
As has been seen the world over in New York, in Rio de Janeiro and many others, periferial areas can often be subject to degradation and crime. The image of those areas can often have a big impact on the lives of the people who originate from there. With Italy being no exception, residents from certain periferial areas of may be subject to discrimination from other residents of their same city.
What Antonio Presti has sought to do within Librino is no mere beautification project. Applying the artistic vision and talents that he has and coordinating and incorporating the resident population in his vision is what has made his projects gain notarity and respect. Working with the resident population is the key ingredient as at the end of the day it is their home and they are the first that need to believe in the project.
During an interview with Odile Milton back in 2011, Presti outlined his hopes for Librino, “My idea is to create a “model Librino” to change the way of understanding the relationship between the Centre and the periphery. It is a civil duty to take responsibility for having “educated” generations that the arrogance of power and ignorance were formed to ask and not to do. Families, schools and churches should educate to do and not to ask. In this sense also Librino becomes not a place to recover, but to be respected”. [2]
In 2009 the “The wall of poems – Door of Beauty”, the largest terracotta artwork in the world, was inaugurated. “The project was realised thanks to the participation of the 9 elementary and middle schools and the oratories of the neighbourhood, which welcome 10,000 students. Infact, artists and poets have worked for more than two years directly in schools with 2,000 children”. [3]
A short documentary was produced by the foundation Fiumara D’arte following the development and realisation of the Door of Beauty [In Italian: La Porta della Bellezza]. “It is necessary to promote educational experiences of active and supportive citizenship”, declared Antonio Presti, “through multidisciplinary projects and network initiatives with the Sicilian territory. With the wall that turns into the Door of Beauty, the inhabitants understand the way of doing, a doing that transforms the artifact into beauty”. [3]
Click the link for the video documentary on Vimeo: La Porta della Bellezza
In 2019, the art installation “Il Cantico delle Creature also known as Il Cantico di Librino” was realised. In Presti’s words, it is “a monumental photographic installation created with a big heart. The inhabitants of Librino put their faces and we artists with eight great photographers with Antonio Parrinello artistic director, we managed to restore a universal value to beauty”. [4]
Ondatv.it asked Presti whether there was an order or sequence to the way the photographs had been displayed. Presti explained, “There is an order in the sense that it represents the cycle of life, inside the door they are all children … there is the path of life, from the age of adolescence to the elderly”
Click the link to see Ondatv.it interview on Facebook: Catania il Cantico di Librino – Intervista ad Antonio Presti
“The real work of art are the thousands of inhabitants who have come together, with all the schools, associations and the church” – Presti from Instagram video
Around this time Presti was interviewed by The Way Magazine, where he was asked, “What does it mean to work in a degraded suburb?” His response was as follows: “Deal with it thinking it is not degraded. Politics in plaster and institutional work by subtraction: against the mafia, against theft, against drug-dealing, and so on ad infinitum. In my work, I relate to a neighbourhood of 70,000 inhabitants by working with them. When I installed the “Door of Beauty”, I healed the surrounding area with the school children, we planted flowers and flower beds. They told me it would all be destroyed the day after. Instead, everything stands exactly as it once did, proudly guarded and protected by the inhabitants”.
“Of course it has a cost, but it costs more not to show beauty” – Presti during the Ondatv.it interview.
Citations:
- Mutti, P. Un Anno Vissuto in Periferia, La Architetto Archiworld Magazine, 2014. ⤶ [link]
- Milton, O. Interview with Antonio Presti – founder of the Park of Fiumara d’Arte- Sicily, Il Giardino dei Bucaneve Blog, 28/11/2011. ⤶ [link]
- Vimeo – Fondazione Antonio Presti, La Porta della Bellezza – Cortometraggio – Fondazione Antonio Presti- Fiumara d’Arte, 29/04/2020. ⤶ [link]
- Instagram – Fiumara d’Arte, Videoclip: Fondazione Antonio Presti – Fiumara d’Arte Inaugurazione 25 Marzo 2019 h.10.30 – Una grande opera monumentale di street art, 23/03/2019. ⤶ [link]
One Comment
Sofia
Bellissimo progetto, ho avuto modo di vedere alcune di queste istallazioni artistiche e sono davvero belle! Ottimo articolo. A presto