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COMPAGNI E ANGELI

Turi (BA)

THE PROJECT

I have imagined to create a work of art to put outside the prison, that would have the exact size of the “stanza di Gramsci” as the prison authorities defines it, in the garden of via Gramsci, exactly opposite the cell window.  Sort of a cloning and doubling of an interior cast towards the outside and towards the city. A sculptural site to integrate the role of city monument and of an architectonic space really available to all. A site dedicated to the power of the glance that permits to escape the physicity of places and at the same time to take root in them through knowledge, study, culture.

THE ARTWORK

The work is dedicated to the Italian politician and thinker who is a symbol of the opposition to fascism, Antonio Gramsci. He spent five years (from 1928 to 1933) in the city prison, where he wrote his famous “Quaderni dal carcere”.                                                                                                   The title Compagni e angeli is inspired by the song La rosa di Turi, of the group from Puglia Al Darawish, and dedicated to a letter written in 1929 by Gramsci to his sister-in-law Tatiana from the prison of Turi, from which these words are taken: “… By the way, the rose has completely brightened up … it has started opening its eyes, then leaves, till it has become totally green … it has even tried to put out a tiny bud … anyway the plant has taken root, and next year it will certainly bloom … I am pleased about it, because since last year I’m interested in cosmic phenomena … the cycle of seasons, connected to solstices and equinoxes, I feel like my own flesh and blood; the rose is alive and will surely bloom, the heat prepares the cold winter and under the snow already the first violets breathe, etc. etc. …”

SKETCHES