AMISTADE 0At the Borders of existence: loss and retrieval of form

4-12 September 2014Villa Corsini Sarsina, Anzio (Italy)

For info Project AmistadeLab: www.amistadelab.com

Exhibition promoted by works bySimona Muzzeddu andFrancesco Gibin

A project by AmistadeLab

Organizing commiteeManuela Vela and Gino Querini

Exhibition catalogueManuela Vela

A special thanks goes to Rita and Aldo Aloia, Anna and Mario Vela, Rita Arcucci, Roberta Sbrac-cia and Vincenzo Petullà for their contribution.

A particular thanks goes to Anzio’s Assessor to Culture and Public education Laura Nolfi

Texts bySara De FranceschiVincenzo MontiGino QueriniManuela Vela

Verses byMaria Luisa Agostinelli

English translation edited byGino Querini

Graphic design bySimona Muzzeddu andFrancesco Gibin

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Introduction

Do you know the italian song Disamistade by Fabrizio de Andrè? The opposite of such word is the sardinian amistade, which means friendship. As the italian amicizia, the sardinian amistade derives from the latin amicitia too.

“Cumque plurimas et maximas commoditates amicitia contineat,tum illa nimirum praestat omnibus, quod bonam spem praelucet in posterum nec debilitari animos aut cadere patitur. “

Cicero’s words, coming from ancient times, show the deeper meaning of the word friendship. In fact they are the perfect way to introduce the bond that connects Simona Muzzeddu and Francesco Gibin, the protagonists of this exhibition. Their reciprocal support dates back from when they first met during high school years. It is in fact this kind of more personal friendship between artists that allows the more universal communication

that characterizes artworks. This is especially true for those artists which put their intimate experiences and hardships into their art just as Simona Muzzeddu did. After the dramatic loss of her father to a fatal illness, the artist had long reflected on the impact that certain illnesses, “neurodegenerative of organic type” ones, have on patients’ lives. It is because of this will to understand and “exorcise” a dramatic experience that “Borderline- Linea di confine” was born between the years 2012 and 2014. A year later, Simona Muzzeddu decided to extend her inquiry to the effects of mental illnesses. She realized then the video installation “Borderline Psychotic Activity” comprised by a video and a series of pictures taken in an abandoned Mental Asylum. From these works it appears clearly how neuropsychiatric diseases cause a devastating loss of control in the patients’ lives: one’s own certainties, role, social identity, they all become lost. In “Borderline - Linea di confine” this condition is represented by a white wheelchair with IV therapy paraphernalia attached to it, portrayed in the middle of a number of naturalistic landscapes. Time and space seem stuck on that empty white chair, as emptiness is the main character of the representation. Just like photographs bring us into a kind of metaphysical dimension, these diseases freeze the patient in an existential condition of endless expectation, beyond which lies only the unknown. In the forty-eight seconds of Borderline Psychotic Activity an actor plays the role of a psychiatric patient, wearing a straitjacket and looking desperately for a way out from his Asylum-prison. In the background we hear voices overlapping each other and the video is continuously

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interrupted by still images and static noises which could be caused both from a short-circuit of the camera or from our conscience. Everything here reminds the strong internal conflict of the patient, losing control on his life, on space and time around him, with the room around him simply empty.For some oriental doctrines, emptiness his the ideal of existence as always ready to receive and being fulfilled. On the other hand, such condition requires the continuous nullification of form and matter. In “Amistade 0”, the empty space left by Simona Muzzeddu resonates with the “fulfilled space” of Francesco Gibin’s works.Francesco Gibin experiments with a sort of “modular” sculpture from industrial and construction wastes. The artist studio is for him a sort of mechanical workshop where, with a bit of imagination, abandoned materials are newly “found” and originate new forms and names for matter. That is how is how combining different materials the artist is able to create things as a mysterious bird or a robotic Prometheus. Gibin, then, is directly opposing the contemporary practices of production and consume. For him, art reveals the hidden potentialities of objects and that is why, in art, no concept of “waste” exists: “nothing is created, nothing is destroyed, everything is transformed”.However, even if western civilization tends to destroy its present products, on the other hand it cares to preserve them in museums, through the works of archaeologist, historians, restorers, the remains of its past. Obviously nothing that we recover is found as it originally was. Time, climate, uses and interpretations transform and give new aspects and new identities to such remains. That is why Archaeology and History focus mainly on the empty spaces in such remains, as it is in such emptiness that the origin of our actions and creations is to be found. For this reason we chose to intertwine the “Amistade 0” exposition with the archeological remains conserved in Villa Sarsina, the prestigious location for our exposition.

Manuela Vela

“Seeing that friendship includes very many and very great advantages, it undoubtedly excels all other things in this respect, that it projects the bright ray of hope into the future, and does not suffer the spirit to grow faint or to fall. (Cicero, De Amicitia, 23, 44 a.C.)

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Villa SarsinaThe reamins of the old Volsci and Roman civilizations have always been a

priceless asset to the cities of Anzio and Nettuno. Urbanization lead to a

massive role of these location for the Roman aristocracy, due to the

beautiful landscapes, mild climate and rich cultural and archaeological

heritage. Just to name a few, we remember the hunting lodge built in 1615

for cardinal Bartolomeo Cesi, Villa Adele. Villa Borghese, built in 1647 for

cardinal Costaguti and Villa Albani, 1726, for Cardinal Alessandro Albani,

who was an estimator of classic art and, after many recovers from the

building of the villa, received the permission from the Pope to conduct

excavations over all the territory.

Lastly, in 1732, the construction on the now Villa Sarsina begun. At first

the Villa was appointed for cardinal Neri Maria Corsini, nephew of Pope

Clement XII, that was conferred the title of Protector of Anzio and general superintendent to the port renewal. Cardinal acquired a large lot not just

for the Villa but also for farming, wood cutting, stone caves, etc. An enterprise meant in order to obtain the domain over the construction materials

of the new port. The Villa was placed in front of the remains of the old port that dates back to Nero, on the western shore of Anzio, higher on the

marine ridge where probably the older temple to the Fortune Goddess of Anzio was located. The architects were Alessandro Galilei from Tuscany

and Nicola Minetti, pupil of the great master Carlo Fontana. In 1820 the Villa was bought by the Mencacci family, but it was definitively completed

in 1875, after the Aldobrandini family took possession of it.

Pietro Aldobrandini, Prince of Sarsina, born in Bruxelles the 24th of June 1845 from Maria D’Aremberg and Camillo Borghese-Aldobrandini, after

acquiring the Villa, placed Francesco Vespignani, son of Virginio, already restorer of Villa Albani, as the head of the restoration with the painter

Salvatore Cottichelli from Naples.

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In the Villa were conserved many noteworthy sculptures discovered during the building and that were buried in the underground rich of

archaeological remains. Mostly known, a statue of Greek origin, was found in 1878 after a landslide among the Mute Arch, and was called the Anzio

Girl, Fanciulla d’Anzio.

Don Pietro was deeply munificent and sensible to the charm of art until “the voice of charity sounded strongly in his soul”. He then financed various

schools in Rome and close by, and went house by house, at the beginning of the academic year, to exhort parents to send their children at school,

paying for their clothes, food, medicines, school supplies and opening bank accounts for them. In Anzio in Via Ambrosini he built the Saint Joseph

kindergarten in 1879, in place of the older stables, and put the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincenzo de’Paoli in charge of it. His ideal was to make the

perfect virtuous Christian citizens, artisans, fathers, out of the poor children. He died prematurely in 1885.

In 1926 the ministry of War took possession of the Villa’s Park to transform it into a Military hospital for the soldiers victim of tuberculosis.

In 1958 the City of Anzio repossessed the building which was restored and, from 2010, appointed it as the location of the City Hall, for all the citizens

to enjoy of an environmental and architectural heritage that is a perennial memory of our historical and cultural identity.

Vincenzo Monti

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Francesco Gibin

Nothing is created, nothing is destroyed

Biografia

Francesco Gibin was born in Busto Arsizio, Varese, in 1975. His artistic upbringing begun at the Art school

“Angelo Frattini” in Varese, where he graduated in 1994. After the High school, attended the Academy of fine

Arts Brera in Milan, where he graduated in Decorative Arts in 2001. Gibin studied also Design and Graphics.

However, is favourite Media remains unconventional sculpture. His distinguishing trait is the fact that he creates

his sculptures from materials that have extinguished their original function and are then considered “waste”-

The artist works primarily with materials from mechanical factories and from construction sites. Some of Gibin’s

works appear on the on line catalogue of the Saatchi Gallery of Los Angeles. Actually Gibin lives in Gallarate and

works at Arsago Seprio.

Discovering the artworks of Francesco Gibin made me smile, just as when a little kid uses as a toy something that is not meant to be a toy. I thought

of Bruno Munari, of his inquiry on the ever changing significance of things, on the role of creativity in exploring the relationships between things.

Gibin materialized in his sculptures the results of a search for metamorphosis, carried out by his imagination, and Offered the results as an invite

for the viewers to use their own imagination.

Every work is born from objects that have lost their original meaning, objects that are now useless, objects That hands and mind change. Hidden

in the forms there are new reasons for things to exist, for things to receive new meanings, reasons that become source materials for art through

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the work of the artist.

That is how a shovel becomes a pair of wings, a bicycle stand becomes a beak, mechanical scraps become creatures sometimes even disturbing.

Nothing is hidden, simply the forms are taken out from their original context and put into something new, becoming something else. Traces

of time becomes textures, rust becomes a shading within the original colour. There is no need to hide the story of these elements, but rather

appears a desire to reveal, Through sculpture, a desire to make possible for everyone to see how meanings change. An operation that transforms

an abandoned construction site into a treasure Island overflowing with marvels. A powerful work on recovery, that stimulates reflection over the

possibility of giving new meaning to things that seem to have none: “artworks, just like games, are magical items, they open spaces to imagination

and creativity. They help to think beyond conventions and to overcome conformism, they are a powerful force urging the renewal” (Lucchini) .

Gibin’s works remember to us that nothing is simply as we see or think it is. Nothing is simply its function, its first use.

If we could see things differently, they would become much more. It is a fact of interpretation and of point of view. The artist’s work is precious

because “only those with a different sight can see the world differently and can give to the others enough information to broaden their sight”

(Munari) . In this case it is the revelation that we can change reality itself.

Sara De Franceschi

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Bird3 - 2013 - assemblage with scraps metal

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Bird 2 - 2013 - assemblage with scraps metal

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Senza titolo - 2013 - assemblage with scraps metal

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Yellow Beak - 2013 - assemblage with scraps metal

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Prometeo - 2014 - assemblage with scraps metal

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Homo - 2014 - assemblage with scraps metal

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Simona Muzzeddu

Biografia

Simona Muzzeddu was born in 1976 in Gallarate where she lives and works. Even so, her connections with her

origins in Sardinia are strong, as she often refers to such island in her works. Her artistic path begun at the Angelo

Frattini Art school in Varese, followed by the Diploma with honors in Painting at the Academy of fine arts Brera in

Milan supervised by Luce Dhelove. During the Academy years Simona developed a passion for Photography, as

she followed the course in “photography and still life” at the Mohole lab in Milan. At the moment Photography

is for the artist the ideal medium as it makes possible to capture immediately the moods and psychophysical

status of the subject in specific moments of her existence as well as her relationships with her surroundings.

Some of the last exhibitions of Simona Muzzeddu were:

• in 2014, “Riciclettata Artistica Rimini-Biella” by Fondazione Michelangelo Pistoletto, Rivoli Museum and Consorzio CIAl; and “Lotteria V Coppa

Darco” dedicated to the world of disability.

• in 2011, “Lo stato dell’arte nel 150° dell’Unità d’Italia” cured by Vittorio Sgarbi, Italian pavillion, 54° Venice Biennale,

Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Turin.

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An evening, on the seaside “The long year when our daughter died was the most beautiful of my life. We hoped for it to never end, for it to last

a century or two, at least” P. Forest

There are images that are somehow annoying. A crack in a white wall. A fly on a TV screen. They are small,

insignificant discomforts, but still they ruin our perfect surroundings and make us frown a little. Indeed, we

are somehow upset by them. In the same way, now, we find ourselves in front of an idyllic sunset by the sea

whereas, instead of the typical couple of young lovers there is a White wheelchair, complete with an Intravenous

set. We read: “Alzheimer”. Our discomfort increases. We turn our head in search of more friendly images but we

are surrounded by this discomfort in infinite variations. Postcard-like skies, remains of old buildings, woods in

autumn, sunny fields. All of them with that chair and those names: “multiple sclerosis”, “Parkinson”, “Ictus”. Those

images are unsuitable, inadequate. They are a scandal, that is the right word. And the scandal is felt as a injury to us. A peculiar injury, because

we are hit by a weakness. As it happens when someone is showing her nudity, her vulnerability, those who appear inadequate, unproductive, hurt

us because they do not hide their minority, their insignificance, because they show themselves even if they clearly are not in the right place. As an

actor that appears on stage showing himself as an actor and not into her character. What we do not want to see, what questions our identity and

Does not stay hidden outsidethe walls of our house, appears as a fly on the screen. Those are gears that do not work as they should and appear

as such, scandalous. The attempts to hide, to normalize these scandals show the fundamental clash between the tendency to normalize the

otherness from one side and the tendency to avoid being identified within a totality that does not belong to us from the other.

As a matter of fact, just like my being does not want to be cancelled, the sight of totality does not want to realize that it is not the only sight possible

but simply one of many possible perspective on things. Those that are scandalous, the others to me, are for me evil. The different processes of

normalization are nothing more that specific exorcisms against such radical otherness. That is why questioning our identity means to enter into a

deep existential dimension of our life, it means to question our strongest beliefs and be condemned to absolute restlessness. However this is only

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part of the reason why the images of Borderline have such a strong effect on us, so strong that we cannot rationalize them. The point is that illness

questions the concept of identity as it is a form of inadequateness but, at the same time, happens and makes every kind of exorcism impossible.

Illness hits as a thunder, without neither notice nor reason. It is a tragedy, that cannot be removed by more or less rational explanations that nullify

the conflict. Illnesses are tragedies lived on the skin, illness takes life, from the realm of necessity to a different level of awareness, to identity. Illness

produces an anthropology more authentic of the others, more deep. And that is because illness is the greatest scandal possible, as it shows our

mortality without making possible for us any form of mourning. Illness makes our limited condition completely visible. The patient is a dead still

alive, completely unmanageable, last remnant impossible to eliminate. The condition of illness shows the enigma that stands as a foundation

to what we called scandal. It is such enigma that the Borderline images present to us. They depict the tragedy of life as the enigma of illness. And

being it an enigma we viewers cannot avoid trying to answer the enigma of the white chair “who?”, “Why?”. However, there is no answer because the

enigma touches all the names. There is no reason because certain experiences go beyond reason. So the scandal pushes us to change perspective,

to broaden our horizon. To question without a possible answer. To have finally an innocent sight, capable of accepting otherness without denying

it. The scandal of illness, pure humanity not sophisticated by any external necessity, by any power, becomes a centre of gravity that breaks the

charm of the image and produces self consciousness.

The enigma asks for a name but no name can be given to it, as it would not be an enigma anymore. Just a chair- a thousand chairs- white

and empty. So these images distance us from the world through emptiness, through whiteness, through absence, heightening perception and

challenging the deeper identity of the viewer. Compared to the anesthetization by overload of stimuli that constitutes the contemporary society

of spectacle, Borderline is catharsis through the exposition of absence. The images of Borderline are images that through absence touch deeper

chords of one’s existence. Lively absence. Black hole that becomes life.

Gino Querini

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“Anossia Cerebrale/ Cerebral Anoxia”- 2012, direct print on Dibond “Trauma Cranico/ Head Trauma”- 2012, direct print on Dibond

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“Ictus/ Stroke”- 2012, direct print on Dibond

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“Coma Profondo/ Deep Coma”- 2011, installation Tomb of Giants and direct print on Dibond

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“Alzheimer”- 2013 direct print on Dibond

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Borderline psychotic activityVideoinstallation by Simona MuzzedduIn “Borderline Psychotic Activity” I dealt with some issues on which I worked before. First I dealt with decay and abandonment: it is easy with

just a simple camera to document how historical buildings made by human beings who are now forgotten are left empty and decaying. These

humongous “presences” from the past are just a dead weight for cities and governments, they are “burdens” scattered among a land. Is it in this

drama of abandonment that I wished to gave new life to forgotten things, whatever they may have been, in a country like Italy, where 2 millions

cubic meters of buildings are unused. In “Borderline Psychotic Activity” the object of my work is an Asylum.

Such a choice made it possible to continue the reflection on the subject of illness which I worked on in “Borderline Linea di confine”. However

in that project I worked on neurodegenerative illnesses with a white chair as the main subject, representing the illness itself, or even the patient

prisoner to the uncertainty of sickness. In “Borderline Psychotic activity” the subject is instead a living person in a straitjacket. The subject expresses

physically his psychic distress, experiencing it as a nightmare, as feeling trapped into his own mental cage.

After the experience with my father’s illness and having met different situations where neurological issues created enormous behavioural alterations

I started to reflect on how brain and mind are such delicate mechanisms. So, silently watching the patients’ behaviour, I was able to notice how

one’s own character is annihilated almost completely by the illness, just like a kind of blackout of the brain, which loses the old data for new ones to

overwrite them. And so the patient goes back almost to a childlike, primordial, condition. How to explain such mental and behavioural regression?

How mind, psyche, unconsciousness, affect people’s behaviour? Is our psyche just a conceptual abstraction? Or is it somehow connected with the

deeper dimension of our soul? Can a mind forget all of its preceding life?

Simona Muzzeddu

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After the reading of “I do not remember it. Snapshots of folly in madmen (Non me lo ricordo. Istantanee di follia nei matti)” by Dr.

Maria Luisa Agostinelli, Junghian Analyst and Psychiatrist for the Social Cooperative Aeper in Bergamo, having found some similarities with

“Borderline Psychotic Activity” in such work, Simona Muzzeddu had a meeting with Dr. Agostinelli for further reflecting on the topic with her. They

met in August, 11th, in Bergamo with Dr. Luca Betelli, also a member of Aeper. After an intense conversation, Dr. Agostinelli dedicated a poem to

the Artist. The poem is entitled “Forty-eight (Quarantòtto)” as the seconds of the video.

Here is a short commentary by Simona Muzzeddu on the meeting with Dr. Agostinelli. On the next page, the poem “Forty-eight”.

“The meeting with Dr. Agostinelli and Dr. Betelli was enlightening! Probably one of the most productive meeting I had in years. After showing them

the ‘Borderline Psychotic Activity’” video, we discussed on the different medical procedures of the past century compared to the ones used now,

which are way better. At the foundation of modern cures there is a positive path of sharing and growth within patient and doctor. Just like a family!

The doctor works in strict vicinity with the patient accompanying her to an ever-growing autonomy. Such insights gave me new points to work on

in new projects and new ideas for my artistic reflection on mental illness. What makes me truly happy is knowing that there will surely be a future

collaboration with Dr. Agostinelli and the Social Cooperative Aeper.”

Simona Muzzeddu

Direzione e progetto

Simona Muzzeddu

Montaggio video

Stefano Visintin

Performer

Giosuè Caggiano

Video Borderline Psychotic ActivityItalia , 2014, colore, 48’’

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Forty-eight

Forty-eight seconds:searching inexorably

those spaces and timesthat of madness

were houseVain.

They were.Forty-eight,

carving inevitably,in those last secondsof folly, its essence:

watching, being seen.Being.

Only forty-eight seconds,to tell that we are nowout of space and time.

We are.But in this forty-eight

there is no time nor spacefor memory to be killed,

as either for hope.Do you want to try?

To us, it doesn’t matter.

ML per S

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AmistadeLab Project

The Sardinian word “Amistade” means friendship. The writer Giuseppe Dessi and the artist Maria Lai wrote in the “Legend of a Forgetful God” that

poetry was born from the meeting between the small Janas fairies with the Sardinian women, until then forced by men to carry stones. Friendship

is a complex matter to define as it takes many forms. However it always begins with a meeting. In the history of art, meetings that were at the

beginning of friendship bonds between artists were countless and particularly fruitful in the realization of great artworks and projects. Our humble

intent is then to lit small artistic fires where artists can meet and build the premises for collaborative workshops finalized in the realization of all

new artworks. At the beginning of such workshops there would be an exhibition to introduce the viewers to the background of the different artists,

followed after the workshop by a second exhibition that would testify of the newborn artworks from the project AmistadeLab.

The first workshop, “Amistadelab 1” will see Simona Muzzeddu and Francesco Gibin realizing a line of Jewels.

Lo Staff

Francesco Gibin

Simona Muzzeddu

Manuela Vela

Gino Querini