Category: projects

ARP-ART RESIDENCY PROJECT SHOWS AT CAPE TOWN ART FAIR

February 16, 2017

We are delighted to announce the arrival in Cape Town of Italian artist Valentina Colella, who was selected for a residency in the framework of ARP-Art Residency Project V Edition. The project, ideated by Centro Luigi Di Sarro of Rome in collaboration this year with Everard Read Gallery Cape Town, began in 2009 and involved various important galleries as well as 13 artists. This fifth edition enjoys the support of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Co-operation; in the period 2015-2017 the project’s activities increased, witnessing many young art enthusiasts as well as art students actively contributing to the residencies in Rome and Cape Town of the two winners of the selection, Valentina Colella for Italy and Zwelethu Machepha for South Africa. Young curators, art historians, photographers, videomakers and students of various disciplines collaborated with the two leaders of this exchange, the artists, through training contributions and the participation to meetings and workshops. It is because of this activity, considered of high cultural, educational and social value, that ARP project was invited this year to take part to Cape Town Art Fair in the Cultural Platforms section, next to the most important South African non-profit organisations.

We invite you to visit stand F13, where the artworks of all Italian and South African artists who took part until today to ARP project will be exhibited, and where it will be possible to find out more about all the events organized by ARP between now and the end of March.
Saturday 18th February from 11 until 3, artists Colella e Machepha will be at ARP’s stand to introduce themselves to CTAF visitors. At 2 pm, the Italian Consul in Cape Town, Antonio Tagliaferri, and the Director of the Italian Insitute of Culture of Pretoria, Anna Amendolagine, will be in conversation with the Project Director, Alessandra Atti Di Sarro, of Centro Luigi Di Sarro, about ARP project and its history. All artists and gallerists who took part to ARP exchanges in the last eight years have been invited to join and share their experiences.

ARP – Art Residency Project will be at CTAF17 CULTURAL PLATFORMS

January 4, 2017

The Centro Luigi Di Sarro’s artistic residencies exchange programme  arrives at Cape Town Art Fair. The local partner RainbowMedia was in fact invited to participate in the CULTURAL PLATFORMS  thanks to the value of the learning experience that ARP- Art Residency Project has played between Italy and South Africa. Started in 2009 and raised every two years, Arp-Art Residency Project has handled to date 12 artists between the two countries and collaborated with several partners as Erdmann Contemporary, SMAC Art Gallery and Everard Read Gallery and the Diplomatic Missions of Italy and South Africa with the aim of offering an artistic and educational experience. The two-year period 2015-2017 which will end in next March with Valentina Colella’s residency in South Africa also has a contribution of MAECI, Italian Foreign Ministry. The stand at the CTart fair will trace all the stages of the project from its beginnings, giving space to the testimonies of those who took part, among whom we like to point Paolo Bini (ARP 2013) winner of the 2016 Premio Cairo.

Paolo Bini – Premio Cairo 2016

November 10, 2016

Congratulation to Paolo Bini! He won the XVII Edizione Premio Cairo 2016 in Milan, one of the most relevant prize focused on the emerging talents. Paolo Bini was selected for our ARP-Art Residency Project 2013 to go for a monthly art residency in Cape Town and this experience definitely opened his southafrican adventure. Now the Centro Di Sarro are very proud about this award. The ARP is an exchange programme focused to the young talents. In RSA ARP is active from 2009. The new edition will be in march 2017 in Cape Town.

ARP – Art Residency project: On the Way to Cape Town, Valentina Colella shows in Italy and Germany

September 10, 2016

From 17 to 25 September 2016, the ‘Museo Laboratorio Ex-manifattura Tabacchi’ Museum, Città Sant’Angelo (Pescara, Italy) will be host to the exhibition by the young artist from Abruzzo Valentina Colella “… e dopo accadde il bianco! [and then All became white!]” curated by Vittoria Biasi. The exhibition will be hosted later at the Italian Institute of Culture in Cologne from 7 October to 7 November and will conclude in December in Emigrant Museum Pascal D’Angelo in Introdacqua (L’Aquila). The project is sponsored by the Italian Institute of Culture in Cologne, the Province of l’Aquila, the Municipality of Introdacqua and the Municipality of Città Sant’Angelo.

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The world of nature in the poetics of Valentina Colella is a declaration of a narrative strategy referring to ghosts, and to heroes, which, removed from all temporal projections, become free in the mental space, imitating aerial space. The artist starts her history by photographing meshes for cages and structures for windows, as a moment of reflection on the idea of opposition which accompanies man’s life and seems to be “inscribed within the constitution of the world.”
In “… e dopo accadde il bianco!”, Valentina Colella’s embarks upon a narrative which focuses on the buzzard, a bird found in Abruzzo and common in certain parts of Europe and Asia. The artist studies the buzzard’s behaviour, isolating certain realities which she analyses in a manner almost looking to possess its rules.
The overlapping pages, engraved within the gradual reduction of the silhouette, create the sculptural depth of the flight. Every page appears like the layout of an isobar of the flight, of the sound, of the unattainability of being.

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The Director of the Institute of Culture in Cologne, Lucio Izzo, states: “A dialogue in the name of contemporaneity and of a conception of art as social commitment that, however, does not exclude either the emotions and the individual perception of the mystery inherent in the places or their intrinsic poetry.
The artist gives voice to a modern Italy, deeply rooted in its lands and origins, and yet totally projected to the future. Such is the spirit that distinguishes our culture and that, with the consciousness of belonging to Europe, characterizes our identity of today and our contribution to the global culture”.

“The title of the exhibition”, writes the curator Vittoria Biasi, “arises from the conception of the work which aims to go above and beyond, to overcome a limit of the visible. The silhouettes engraved or painted within a deliberate ritual process develop the procedure horizontally and in depth through an imaginary invisible white meeting between man, bird and my lucky star, as the artist says. A new form of image was born from the experience of what is real: this is a philosophical principle of thought, of love, of pride, of oneself”.

ARP – Art Residency Project PHASE 2: Open Call for Emerging Artists in South Africa

August 15, 2016

The call is open for artists U35, resident in South Africa, who wish to participate in the Luigi Di Sarro Prize which will be awarded as part of the ARP-Art Residency Project on March 25, 2017 at the Tsoga Community Centre in Philippi, Cape Town. All informations and application form on our local partner RAINBOWMEDIAteam website. The award is supported by the Italian Consulate in Cape Town and will be delivered by the Consul Alfonso Tagliaferri. The finalists selected by the jury chaired by the artist Kay Hassan will be exhibited at the hall of the Community Centre where will be held the awards ceremony.

                         untitled  ARP INSTAGRAM DIARY

ARP – Art Residency Project PROMO DOC

July 29, 2016

ARP-Art Residency Project is a biennial cultural exchange programme intended to promote young art talents. The ARP is a Centro Luigi Di Sarro, project in partnership with Everard Read Gallery Cape Town. This is a PROMO of a work in progress DOCUMENTARY. The ARP team will be soon in South Africa to shot the Phase 2: Valentina Colella in Cape Town.

 

CUBA – Erik Chevalier and Mauro Magni in Havana

July 14, 2016

Havana / An experience in barrio Cantarrana

between cooperation and culture Centro Luigi Di Sarro and CISP-Sviluppo dei popoli together for the upgrading of a popular district in cuban capital

Nadia Angelucci e Tiziana Bartolini  (extract from NoiDonne 2 gennaio 2012)

One of the interventions made during the Italian Culture Week in Cuba is what created the Centro Luigi Di Sarro and the CISP – International Committee for the Development of Peoples. Two women, Alessandra Atti Di Sarro – journalist and vice president of Centro Luigi Di Sarro – and Paola Larghi – responsible for Cisp-Development projects of peoples in Cuba – have been the protagonists and builders of this visionary idea that combines development with culture and art.

To Alessandra Atti Di Sarro we asked how this project was born?
CISP brings in the Cantarrana barracks in Havana, with the artists of the Huellas group, an urban redevelopment project through art painting houses according to the inhabitants, which I had to visit last year. From that afternoon passed between the painted houses of Cantarrana, a reportage was born that was then transmitted by TG2 Stories and a collaboration with Paola Larghi that was developed thanks to the invitation of the Italian Embassy in Cuba to present a project with the Centro Luigi Di Sarro for the 2011 Culture Week. We brought two artists selected by Centro Di Sarro, Erik Chevalier and Mauro Magni to Havana for the “VISUS” exhibition, painting and photography works (which was held on 22 / 11 to 4/12 at the Provisional Center of Design Luz y Oficios) and connect the two italian artist with the group of Cuban artists Huellas to propose the sketch of a mural to be made on one of Cantarrana’s houses as an interaction / workshop between Italians and Cubans . Chevalier and Magni have made a real site-specific with 4 hands. The work for the project, with the participation of the Cuban group, lasted 3 days, at the end of which there was a large party with music groups in the barrio that animated from the afternoon to night the alley where the mural was discovered in the evening by the  Italian Ambassador Marco Baccin. Also part of the project was a meeting of artists and cooperation actors dedicated to the theme “art and urban transformation” to talk about a new international cooperation that goes for a concept of development increasingly linked to the cultural factor.

So, all comes out from a meeting of women …
We had an instant understanding! Perhaps because we are of the same generation and we have in common cultural background and also many ideals. She loves art, theater and music, and she’s convinced that one has to fight for a better world, that’s why she works in the field of cooperation for development. I have always pursued a serious commitment in the world of international cooperation, I make my personal volunteering through my journalism profession to the South of the world, and in addition in my experience there is culture as a skill, I have been working on it in Rai, italian television for years, and culture is also the mission of my family’s activity with the ‘Centro Luigi Di Sarro’ in Rome, entitled to my uncle, whom I care about international exchanges.

Are you satisfied with the result?
To see hundreds of people attending the festival for the inauguration of the mural and to see that during the final concert people was busy all the time to photographing or getting shot in front of the opera … well, it was amazing! Collaboration among artists was rich in ideas; Chevalier and Magni (the first works as a restorer and decorator with tromp l’oeil, the second as decorator and set designer) have been able to offer many technical information and receive interesting information on recycled and alternative materials that we do not usually use. And more: at the exhibition opening and at the round table there was lots of participants, especially young people, a sign that we also focused on the theoretical point of view. And in times when culture is considered irrelevant or even useless, it was, yes, a real satisfaction.

 

CUBA – Un Projecto Especifico – Paolo Bini and Catherine Biocca in Havana

July 12, 2016

Un Projecto Especifico is the installation made in Havana by Paolo Bini and Catherine Biocca for the XIII Weeks of Italian Culture 2010.
The two artists selected by Centro Luigi Di Sarro at the invitation of the Italian Embassy in Cuba exhibited their works in the halls of the Convent of Saint Francis at Old Havana and during their stay they designed and built a site-specific that represented their encounter with Cuban reality. This prolific experience has been made with a catalog that collects the photographic narrative of the exhibition done in Havana, accompanied by the texts of Ambassador Marco Baccin and Alessandra Atti Di Sarro who curated the project. For some years, the Centro Luigi Di Sarro has carried out such artistic initiatives in different areas of the world with the aim of promoting the encounter, knowledge and confrontation. The exhibition was repeated in Rome, to account for the Cuban experience, but also to open the debate on the importance of cultural dialogue, especially in the field of contemporary artistic research and experimentation.

 

ARP Project – Machepha’s Residency ended

June 14, 2016

 

Last hours in Rome for the 26 years old Zwelethu Machepha who ended his artistic residency within ARP – Art Residency Project, at the Centro Luigi Di Sarro he had the final interview by the filmmaker Angelica Farinelli which is building the documentary about the whole project. As location, the ‘virtual piazza’ that the big Machepha’s works had crowded into the central room of the exhibition space of the Center for Documentation of Contemporary Artistic Research in Rome. All around,  on the walls and the floor, the huge sheets spread out like the many figures who crowded the six weeks of meetings and emotions. After the opening, Machepha continued to visit the City. Together with Emanuele Meschini, who accompanied him throughout the period of the residency, he noted the different architectures of neighborhoods, as Eur, Flaminio, Historical centre, Villa Borghese. He visited the MAXXI, the Roman temple of contemporary art and the Auditorium Parco della Musica, the Colosseum and the archeological sites at the Foro Romano, and the Vatican Museums with the wonder of the Sistine Chapel.

Finally last week for the young South African artist even a day trip to Florence thanks to a meeting with the sculptor Nicola Rossini who drove in the cradle of the Renaissance, and accompanied him in the visit to the Academy of Fine Arts of Florence.

A millennial history summed up in a forty-five-day trip that probably will bear fruit in the coming months. “I will need time – said Zwelethu Machepha – to rework the multitude of informations and emotions that I got. If I think about it now, I feel just overpowered.” What will remain of the meetings, human and artistic exchanges, the wires stretched between worlds, definitely not so far, are some works created during the residency, one of which, entitled “Made in Rome” entered in the Centro Di Sarro collection. The ARP project is now preparing for the second phase. The team will travel to Cape Town, South Africa, to prepare for the arrival  of Valentina Colella, in February 2017.

ARP – Art Residency Project PHASE 2

June 5, 2016

VALENTINA COLELLA SELECTED FOR THE ARTISTIC RESIDENCY IN CAPE TOWN

untitled   ARP INSTAGRAM DIARY

While Zwelethu Machepha is about to end his artistic residency in Rome, the Centro Luigi Di Sarro and the partner Everard Read Gallery are pleased to announce that the italian artist Valentina Colella was selected for the second phase of the ARP – Art Residency Project . Valentina Colella was born in 1984, in Sulmona (AQ). She is a youngh artist who use art to explore the world of youth. Her work focuses on the relationships between reality, the body and the digital languages. In a completely different way, through the use of various techniques, painting, photography, video, installations and mixed media, Colella approaches the theme of consciousness of reality and individual identity increasingly submerged, altered or even dissolved by the arrogance of the so-called digital world. Much of the Colella’s artwork over the years has investigated and represented the crushing, even emotional, human soul.

Valentina Colella was officially presented to the ARP project team during in occasion of the opening of the Zwelethu Machepa’s show that featured the project Colonial Ghosts reworked during his Rome art residency. Colella has so literally could enter into the virtual plaza of the shattered  and “pixelated” identities proposed by Machepha to the Centro Di Sarro, a meeting that will be repeated in Cape Town  when the 31 years old artist from Abruzzo will held her art residency in South Africa and the two young artists will meet again to work on a four hands site-specific .

Valentina Colella will be in Cape Town in mid-February to the end of March 2017, and his solo exhibition was held at the Everard Read Gallery. The ARP project also involves a group of young U35 people in South Africa with various training projects in various artistic disciplines.

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