Daltonico

Daltonico is a project conceived by Ibada Wadud and Angel Masip Soriano, developed by them and myself, and realised by myself and Ibada. The project formed part of an intervention organized by Fondazione Pistoletto and the La Pigna Mon Amour Association in the oldest part of the italian city of San Remo.

The purpose of this social intervention was to point out the integration and tolerance issues that are daily present in this part of the city, and create a space and moment of reflexion for it.

The project itself consisted in creating a serie of black and white panels with phrases that would resume these complicated social conditions.
“Coexistence is more than living side by side”, written in Italian, and
“Do you know your neighbour’s name?”, written in arabic.
The panels would stay in San Remo long after the intervention of artists would finish, collocated in visible places of the old part of the city... except that they both were broken and/or removed almost immediately by the neighbours…

We tried to replace them, or change the location, but both ways, they were not kept visible for more than a day.

Special thanks to Giuseppe Campanile, Iba and all that were there helping.

Photography by Giuseppe and Unidee2011.

Biel.lana

Biel.lana is all about collaboration between me, the resident artist and inhabitants of the Biella city, trying to    create a common story, enter in dialogue, get to know each other. 

The thread got to be this connecting point, as it is an element strongly related to Biella’s history of the textile and wool production. In the same time, as an object it has also a lot of different connotations, such as “thread of life”, “Ariadna’s thread”… A thread is very easy to convert in a geometrical line, or a time line, knotted it can serve of support and create textures.

After that comes knitting. It’s an activity that has a long history and tradition, that demands patience and time, and can give a very practical or poetic result. It’s an activity that many times was and still is making people gather, laugh, talk about life, dreams, past, present and future. A sweater, sock, scarf made knitting contains the time and personal story of a person who did it. It “remembers” the process, thoughts and ideas that were conceived meantime. It’s like an insect frozen in amber, a piece of somebody’s lifetime included in the wool structure. For me it’s the point where the connection between the thread and life happens, both supported by the time. 

Special thanks to Marco Vanetti and all ladies of Biella.

Photography by Raphael Franco and Margarita  Vazquez Ponte.