To Pescara Agnese Purgatorio brings words, in sonic as much as sign form: sounds and graphemes of distant lands that have the scent of the Adriatic wind.
As of Saturday, April 27, the permanent work “Il Vento porta via Velo” became part of the collection of site-specific works at Spazio Matta in Pescara, the outcome of the third of the artist residencies curated by Marcella Russo, creator and curator of the Matta Arte Contemporanea section.
The work that Purgatorio presented in Pescara is made of three moments-filmic, performative and installation-and returns the result of the residency “SeTaccio il Vento.” It is no coincidence that the name chosen echoes the verses of the Iranian poet Forugh Farrokhzad, a voice of female dissent who challenged Islamic tradition with her poetry: for years Purgatorio’s research has focused on the word and attention to the last.
Sifting the sand and silencing the wind, to bring something to light. The first moment of restitution is a video that weaves together audio and images produced by the artist, almost remnants of the Adriatic summer. Invoking silence is the harpocratic gesture of a child, whose finger to his mouth alludes, perhaps, to the complex character of poetry, which plays between words and silences, pauses.
Forugh Farrokhzad’s verses and voice, recorded in 1963, return in guitarist Bob Cillo’s performance: blues notes over Forough Farrokhazad’s voice and text. And the result is a melody of a past voice that revives and tells of the urgency of a change of course. “I said […]I would like to speed up my escape from the windstorm and the blizzard. […]I remember that my whole life is wind. I became the pelican of the desert.”
The neon green light turns on at dusk after guitar notes and melodic oriental vocals: the permanent installation “The Wind Takes Away the Veil” is a hand-blown neon and written in Farsi, a free quotation of a verse by Abbas Kiarostami, the inspirer of Iran’s Green Revolution.
And so, the video connection during the presentation of the film with Shady Alizadeh, activist of the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement is a moment to remember to “not disabuse ourselves of the rights of humanity,” general rights that cannot be categorized.
The unveiling of the new work and the return of Purgatorio’s work is, finally, an opportunity for debate on art residencies: a talk moderated by Miriam Di Francesco that featured discussion together with curator Marcella Russo and artist Agnese Purgatorio, Andrea Croce, founder of Unpae, Giovanni Gaggia, founder of Casa Sponge and Lucia Giardino, founder of GuilmiArtProject.
So why was a residency born? To return to living but also to read the native, often peripheral places with different eyes. Residencies made of moments of negotiation but also of strong synergy with the territories, because the art residency is also political action and an action of mediation of contemporary languages.
Agnese Purgatorio, Il Vento porta via Velo, 2024
As of Saturday, April 27, the permanent work Il Vento porta via Velo became part of the collection of site-specific works at Spazio Matta in Pescara, the outcome of the third of the artist residencies curated by Marcella Russo, creator and curator of the Matta Arte Contemporanea section.
Lo Spazio Matta, center for contemporary arts, was founded in 2011 as an urban regeneration project in the area of the former Slaughterhouse in Pescara. The residency project of which the production of Agnese Purgatorio’s ll Vento porta via Velo is part is curated by Marcella Russo. Soul and body of the project is the cultural association Artisti per il Matta, which networks cultural entities, artists and curators who have been engaged for years in the production and promotion of live entertainment (dance, theater, performance, music) and visual arts (video art, cinema and architecture). The common goal and desire is to create “an artistic district” that promotes the value of culture as a “widespread good.” The challenge lies in bringing “beauty to the periphery,” that is, offering a quality artistic proposal that puts “the value of the viewer’s experience” at the center. The approach chosen, is networking: on the one hand, artists and cultural workers from the city and the region are included in the activities of the Space; on the other hand, the city community is involved as active users of culture.
