Sicily in the visual story of Flavio Favelli on display at the Real Albergo delle Povere in Palermo. The Real Albergo delle Povere of the Regional Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Palermo presents until September 8, 2024 “Sicily and other figures”an exhibition by Flavio Favelli that through four thematic groups of works – collages, sculptures and installations – tells his relationship with Sicily, seen as a place of unpredictable
visions. In parallel with the exhibition, the artist will also create a site-specific intervention for the green area of the Ucciardone prison.
In the exhibition venue of the Royal Hotel of the Poor of the Regional Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Palermothe artist’s exhibition Flavio Favelli, Sicily and other figuresedited by Elisa Fulco and Antonio Leone.
Supported by the Regional Department of Cultural Heritage and Sicilian Identity, promoted by the Riso Museum and realized in collaboration with the Acrobazie Association, the exhibition is composed of four thematic nuclei (the Rivista Sicilia,”, the signs, the “scarrabili,” the barriers) that tell the artist’s relationship with the city of Palermo and with Sicily. A particular relationship, marked by numerous acquaintances, that has developed from the early 2000s until today.
The exhibition is the result of a work of recovery and assembly of visual elements taken from different contexts, which captures and stages the coexistence of “high” and “low” in Sicilian culture.
Favelli, a participating witness of a culture that oscillates between the sublime and the profane, started from his personal collection of magazines Sicilywith which he created a series of collages, to search for the tangible signs of an “inspiration that smoulders beneath the rubble”, and which emerges for example in the “scarrabili” (iron containers for collecting building debris) that dot the city of Palermo – deliberately repainted with bright colors, whose sibylline nature refers to construction and waste – in the dull signs, in the old barriers in which the identity of the island is expressed in the semi-artisanal furnishings, in the improvised constructions, in the spontaneous assemblages.
The installation Sicily and other figureswhich gives the title to the exhibition, is made up of the framed covers of the magazine Sicilycomposed of 89 issues, published by Flaccovio between the 1950s and 1980s, on which the artist intervened with assemblages and collages of advertisements from the 1970s and 1980s. Taken from lifestyle, news and current affairs magazines, such as People And Todayand reassembled in collages, the images selected by the artist trace formal correspondences between the two vast imaginaries. The aim is to recover the magazine’s “irreverent” attitude Sicily which, through a falsely childish graphic design, placed classical art and popular traditions on the same level, cancelling the hierarchies and the very social pyramids that characterize the island.
As the artist states, “in the historic center the art of the past and the vulgar and battered iron chest, often full of rubble and garbage, merge into new, jarring images, new phantasmagorical postcards. They would seem to be things of hard workers, of merciless worlds, barges from the Styx that carry rubble and offal of the stones, shards, walls of the city and its layers”.
“The Museum is particularly interested in Flavio Favelli’s project because it carries out a cultural operation of critical historical value beyond
how artistic” says the director of the Riso Museum, Evelina De Castro, “it looks through the lens of today’s contemporary visual language, what was the synthesis of yesterday’s contemporary, the magazine “Sicilia”, published from 1953, a decisive year for art in Sicily, to 1982. Today we would define that experiment as an observatory on the arts, visual, literary, immaterial, a total form of communication that brought together artists, curators, academics, and operators, such as gallery owners, publishers and administrators of public affairs of the newly formed Sicilian Region. A background from which to start again that Favelli begins.
In line with his research, Favelli mixes different registers, decontextualizes everyday objects by bringing them into museum spaces, giving solemnity to found materials in which personal and public dimensions coexist: disused and switched off neon signs of historic shops, “scarrabili”, old barriers from the warehouses of the Calogero Di Bona – Ucciardone District Prison, outlining a highly original path for themes and figures.
The exhibition Sicily and other figures it also becomes the common thread that connects institutions that belong to apparently separate worlds, strengthening the bond between museum, prison and city, between inside and outside. In this context, the collaboration between the Regional Museum and the Prison management was born, starting from a shared vision of the social importance of art as a lever for change. In conjunction with the exhibition, the artist will also create a site-specific intervention for the green area of the Ucciardone prison. It is a “container”, transformed into a habitable module, reserved for meetings with the families of inmates, the result of the workshop held by Flavio Favelli on the occasion of the Spazio Acrobazie project, a productive and redevelopment laboratory through artistic mediation, curated by Elisa Fulco and Antonio Leone, the result of a co-design between inmates, social-health workers and students. As Fabio Prestopino, director of the Ucciardone prison in Palermo, states: – “the site-specific intervention created by the artist Flavio Favelli in the green area of the Ucciardone prison, the result of the Spazio Acrobazie project, is a further sign of the importance that the penitentiary institution reserves for improving meeting places between detainees and their closest family members, including, first and foremost, minor children.
The coincidence of the installation in the historic penal institution with the opening of the Flavio Favelli exhibition in the spaces of the Albergo della Povere of the Riso Museum is an opportunity to confirm the collaboration between the two institutions as evidence of the desire to spread the concept of art as a vehicle for cultural and social redemption.”
Acrobazie is a cultural association that deals with social innovation and cultural welfare, adopting contemporary culture as a design and communication strategy to promote social inclusion, equal opportunities, economic development and corporate social responsibility within profit and non-profit institutions. After being a partner in the project “The Art of Freedom” (2019 – 2020), which took place inside the Ucciardone prison in Palermo, is currently the leader of the project “Spazio Acrobazie. Laboratory of production and redevelopment through artistic mediation” (2022-2024), curated by Elisa Fulco and Antonio Leone, promoted by Fondazione con IL SUD and Fondazione Sicilia. Acrobazie won the IX edition of the Italian Council Call with the project “L’Habit Habité” by the artist Sissi and in 2021 the X edition of the Italian Council Call with the project “The Swing of Ingustice” by the artist Anila Rubiku, exhibited at the Vierzon Art and Architecture Biennale (September 2022).
Carlo Franza