Il gioco della Campana

Italy and the countries of Southern Europe are gateways to immigration from the African continent. With L’Italia rovesciata, Luciano Fabro hung the Italian boot upside down, ironically questioning national representation and our perception of space.
De Novellis presents the geography of migratory flows in the form of a popular game: hopscotch. Italy is the extension of the African continent and the pathway from South to North. Each square represents an African country from which emigrants, refugees or asylum seekers have departed, territories that each player must jump over, not without danger, to reach the desired goal. The chrysanthemums that dot this hopscotch seem to bear witness to the often tragic results of this race. The artist was inspired by the tradition of infiorate, the flower carpets that cover some Italian streets on the occasion of the Christian festival of Corpus Christo. A group of students will collaborate in the design and production of this installation.

The artist Romina De Novellis revisits major works of arte povera in an ecofeminist perspective. She proposes to reinterpret and update certain themes and motifs of arte povera, in order to rethink, in resonance with this current, the relations between genders and between all living beings. Thus, consumerism, inequalities, the weight of the past and the resistance of living beings are all palpable concerns in her performances where the body of the female artist comes into play. In doing so, Romina De Novellis imagines a series of actions in resonance with the militant attitude and the use of simple materials of arte povera.

The proof is in the title, a tribute to the Italian artist and writer Ketty La Rocca, inspired by her collage, La cultura che non vive, created in 1964. The actions of Romina De Novellis reinvest certain attitudes of arte povera, with an affirmation of the female body, in an openly ecofeminist gesture. A way to remind that arte is a feminine word in Italian.