The project was carried out in close collaboration with the Academy of Fine Arts of Venice and the Bonotto Foundation
The former Church of Jesus and Mary can be visited until September 20th.
Ricucire (Mending) is a workshop project involving a selection of students from the Academy of Fine Arts of Venice in a physical and symbolic journey through the earthquake-stricken areas of Belice. Drawing on the work of Alberto Burri, the workshop offers a reflection on "reparative" actions and the relationship between wounds and landscape. During the residency, a new prìsente will be created, a traditional ceremonial banner carried in procession by the community and, during the years of Ludovico Corrao's administration, commissioned from the artists.
The new prisente, created in collaboration with local craftsmen from the Artensis association, students from the A3 sculpture course at the Venice Academy of Fine Arts, directed by Giorgio Andreotta Calò, and under the supervision of master embroiderer Maria Mercante, was created thanks to the support of the Bonotto Foundation, which generously donated the fabric. The prisente will be carried in procession from the Mother Church of Gibellina Nuova to Burri's Grande Cretto, returning to Gibellina Nuova on foot in a circular route. The work will then be entrusted to the Congregation of San Rocco for the August 16th celebrations and will be donated to the city. The project intertwines ritual, journey, and artistic practice as ways of mending past and present.
The workshop is intended as a pilot project for the activation of a stable collaboration between the Italian Academies of Fine Arts and the city of Gibellina which, thanks to its nomination as Capital of Contemporary Art 2026, is reactivating a series of spaces in the city to be used as permanent workshops.
GIBELLINA, CAPITAL OF CONTEMPORARY ART 2026
Ricucire | ViaItria
_“___In the wake of the religious tradition that celebrates the patron saint of Gibellina, San Rocco, the project activates a collective rite through a workshop (Ricucire) and a performative action (ViaItria).__
__During the workshop, a new present will be created, charged with symbolic meaning through collective ritual action.__
__The prisente, the artefact referred to, consists of a large ceremonial cloth with a long and narrow shape, traditionally carried in procession by a group of people from the local community on the day of celebration of the feast of San Rocco (16 August).__
__The miracle-working figure of the saint of Montpellier was investigated during the sculpture course held by the teacher and artist Giorgio Andreotta Calò through a comparison with another fundamental figure for the history of contemporary art, that of Joseph Beuys.__
The German artist was invited by Ludovico Corrao, then mayor of Gibellina Nuova, to commission a work for the city. A poignant visual testimony of Beuys's trip to Sicily remains, collected by photographer Mimmo Iodice, who portrays him as a diviner amid the rubble of the earthquake-destroyed city.
__As in the work of Alberto Burri, the trauma produced by the seismic event becomes the common thread that guides the restorative action of the Ricucire laboratory and the ViaItria work.__
__In homage to Burri, to the figure of Beuys and to the celebration of San Rocco, a constellation of symbolic references is constructed in collective action.__
__On the surface of the present, the route that connects the city of Gibellina Nuova with the rubble covered by Burri's Grande Cretto and returns to the new city is stitched together. A journey toward this epicenter and a return to the new logos, a circular itinerary that amplifies the transformative dimension of the ritual, where what is transformed is the perception and
consciousness of the participants, who become bearers of memory and custodians of change.__
The embroidered red thread alludes to the myth of Ariadne, just as the sculptural Daedalus of the Grande Cretto becomes a labyrinth. Trauma is metaphorically identified with the monstrous figure of the Minotaur, who in the myth is confined within the depths of the labyrinth, a figuration of the psyche. The concrete action of the journey to the epicenter of the cretto/labyrinth, the dreamlike dimension of the night spent within it, and the return to the Mother Church, thus trace the circular movement of the ritual.
The prêt-à-porter, created by the students and carried in procession, replicates in its proportions a street in the old city that today coincides with a groove in the Grande Cretto—Via Itria, dedicated to the Madonna dell'Itria or "Madonna del Buon cammino." The prêt-à-porter thus becomes a simulacrum of this street, a traced path, an acted path, and finally, a tent relocated in the Cretto as a resting place to shelter the group while they sleep. This dimension of the home (oikos), a still nomadic and transitory space, finds its new place and roots at the conclusion of the ritual process in the return to the new city.
Participants:
— Valentina Bianco
— Lupe Brie
— Mina Biasutti
— Francesca De Robertis
— Lorenzo Lavezzo
— Silvia Dal Bianco
— Anna Benfatto
— Irene Pace
— Elia Lovat
— Justin Manfrenuzzi
— Cristeo Giusti
— Jonathan Montagna
— Tommaso Ravasi
— Collaboration: Academy of Fine Arts of Venice
— Collaboration: Bonotto Foundation
— Technical partner: Artensis
— Technical consultant: Maria Mercante
Thanks to:
— Burri Foundation
— The embroiderers of the Artensis Association
— Salvatore La Grassa
— Le Terre Di Prima61
— Elimi Home
— La Massara
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