From New York to L’Aquila: A Call for Art

Giulia Madron, Mila Tenaglia (July 08, 2014)

The city of L’Aquila becomes an open-pit gallery thanks Off Site Art, a project of public art from New York which invites emerging Italian artists to participate to the reconstruction of the city bringing their art works.

From New York a great project of public art lands in L’Aquila, the city that suffered in 2009 from the devastating earthquake which almost destroyed the center of the city. The project, Off Site Art [2], calls many Italian emerging artists to transform the city in an open-pit gallery.

The initiative is promoted by ArtBridge [3], a non-profit organization of public art from New York which uses scaffoldings and enclosures present within the urban fabric as white canvas on which artists can exhibit their works.

The goal of this project is to “create benefits to the present of this crumbled city, occupying the scaffoldings of the several construction sites in the city center and transforming them in the walls of a big open-pit art gallery, where you can stop, meditate on the works and just remain fascinated by them and join our present.”

Off Site Art [2], curated by Veronica Santi [4], calls emergeing artists to be part, through their art, of the reconstruction process of the city and its identity. Artists have to send, by July 9th, pictures of their works, a maximum of five, together with a message of 140 characters only.

The selection of the works, which will award the most interesting pictures printing them in PVC on the tarpaulins that cover the scaffoldings of the construction sites present around the city, will be entrusted to an international scientific committee composed of many experts of art: Ida Panicelli (Director of ArtForum 1988-1992, New York), Cecilia Alemani (Donald R. Mullen, Jr. Curator & Director di High Line Art, New York), Cecilia Guida (Independend Curator and Professor of Art History at l’Accademia di Belle Arti of L’Aquila), Giuseppe Lignano (Founder and President of LOT-EK, Napoli and New York).

The selected art works will be shown until the end of the renovation of the building on which they will be hung. A great initiative which gives to art the responsibility of accompany, simbolically, the reconstruction of the Italian city.

The initiative was realized in collaboration with Università degli Studi de L’Aquila, MU6, Global I.A., Terrae Mutatae, Smartly, patrocinated by the Commune of L’Aquila and sponsored by Gran Sasso Science Institute, Ance L’Aquila.