Giorgio Andreotta Calò
Ricucire / Laboratorio (1-14 agosto) |
ViaItria / Azione (15-16 agosto)

The project was carried out in close collaboration with the Academy of Fine Arts in 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 Venice Academy of Fine Arts in a physical and symbolic journey through the earthquake-stricken Belice area. 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 cloth carried in procession by the community and, during the administration of Ludovico Corrao, commissioned from the artists. The new prìsente, 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 made possible thanks to the support of the Bonotto Foundation, which generously donated the fabric. The prìsente will be carried in procession from the Mother Church of Gibellina Nuova to Burri's Grande Cretto, before 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 reconnecting past and present. The workshop is intended as a pilot project for the establishment 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 keeping with the religious tradition that celebrates Gibellina's patron saint, San Rocco, the project activates a collective ritual through a workshop (Ricucire) and a performative action (ViaItria).__ __During the workshop, a new prisente will be created, imbued with symbolic meaning through collective ritual action.__ __The prisente, the artifact in question, consists of a large, long, narrow ceremonial cloth, traditionally carried in procession by a group of people from the local community on the feast day of San Rocco (August 16).__ __The miracle-working figure of the saint from Montpellier was explored during the sculpture course taught by teacher and artist Giorgio Andreotta Calò through a comparison with another key figure in the history of contemporary art, Joseph Beuys.__ __The German artist was invited by Ludovico Corrao, then mayor of Gibellina Nuova, with the intention of commissioning a work for the city. A poignant visual testimony of Beuys's journey to Sicily remains, collected by photographer Mimmo Iodice, who portrays him as a diviner amid the rubble of the city destroyed by the earthquake. As in the work of Alberto Burri, the trauma caused by the seismic event becomes the common thread guiding the restorative action of the Ricucire workshop 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 the collective action. On the surface of the present, the itinerary connecting the city of Gibellina Nuova with the rubble covered by Burri's Grande Cretto and returning to the new city is stitched together. A journey towards this epicenter and a return to the new logos, a circular itinerary that amplifies the transformative dimension of the ritual, where what is changed is the perception and consciousness of the participants who become bearers of memory and guardians 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 in 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 inside it, and the return to the Mother Church, thus traces the circular movement of the ritual. The prisente created by the students and carried in procession, reproduces in proportion 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 prisente 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 protect the group's sleep. This dimension of the home (oikos) from a still nomadic and transitory space finds its new location and roots at the conclusion of the ritual process in the return to the new city.”__ The 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 — Collaborazione: Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia — Collaborazione: Fondazione Bonotto — Partner tecnico: Artensis — Consulente tecnico: Maria Mercante Thanks to: — Fondazione Burri — Le ricamatrici dell’associazione Artensis — Salvatore La Grassa — Le Terre Di Prima61 — Elimi Home — La Massara