An artwork that declines the contemporary and to take with you in a hand luggage. This is the bet for 5 winning artists and one curator of the ARP PACK AND GO competition.
The residency program of the Centro Luigi Di Sarro is aimed at young people under 30 and is carried out with the contribution of Youth Exchanges from MAECI and other partners. A traveling workshop between Rome, Valona and Amsterdam to discuss and investigate the notion of contemporary.
What does contemporary art mean and, above all, how and how much can the definition of contemporary be adapted to the continuous change of time and history?
The last few years have confronted us with the need to reflect on the Hic et Nunc, suddenly erasing that sense of stability that was associated with the idea of the contemporary era, our contemporary, peaceful and progressive era.
In short, is history perhaps putting us in front of a new era? So will the future be the new contemporary? And how will art be able to respond to these mutations?
These are the issues on which the ARP program intends to dialogue. It will start in Vlore in Albania where the Consulate General of Italy will host the first meeting of the winners of the Art Residency Project for a Meet up that will take place on October 14, on the occasion of the 18th Amaci-Maeci Contemporary Day.
Artan Shabani, art historian, one of the founders of the Albanian Gallery of Art, will meet the curator Veronica Budini and the artists Mpumelelo Buthelezi, Florinda Ciucio, Amelia Kuhlmann, Svenia Jarisch and Giampaolo Parrilla, accompanied by Alessandra Atti Di Sarro, vice president of the Centro Luigi Di Sarro. On show the works selected for PACK AND GO that will come out of the luggage for the first time to ignite the debate.
The group will then return to Italy, to Rome, where the workshop will take place at the Luigi Di Sarro Center: 10 intense days of meetings, lessons, workshops and visits to museums and archaeological sites to continue to search for that connection that binds the ancient to the modern, the past to the future and thus to place one’s own contemporaneity in a broader reflection. To conclude the residency, the works of PACK AND GO, focused by the dialogue during the workshop, will return to the exhibition to question the public. The appointment with this second Meet up is for 25 October at the Centro Di Sarro Center, in Rome.
The conclusion will be held in Amsterdam, where the group will be hosted by the Italian Cultural Institute, to explore the city, its museums and its history. The Meet up with the public and the Dutch art scene will take place on 29 October.
ARP is an artistic residency program, conceived and implemented by the Centro Luigi Di Sarro, with the contribution of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other partners. For its 8th edition, it has promoted the PACK AND GO formula, that is the bet to conceive and create an artwork that represents the idea of contemporary and that can be carried in a hand luggage to allow maximum mobility.
The Consulate General of Italy in Vlore, the Italian Cultural Institute in Amsterdam, Mediaaid Onlus and Rainbow Media NPO participate in supporting this 8° edition.
The jury of the ARP PACK AND GO competition, which selected the 6 young people from European, Balkan and Southern African countries, was composed of Alessandra Atti Di Sarro, Simone Ciglia University of Oregon USA and Carlotta Sylos Calo ‘University of Rome Tor Vergata.