Summer in Salento is not just about the beach and the sea: the Castello Volante in Corigliano d’Otranto (Lecce), one of Puglia’s most fascinating manor houses, once again proves itself to be a hub for the visual arts and an observatory on the realities of the world, with an extraordinary programme of exhibitions and installations spanning photography, the arts and the visual and plastic arts.
Opening on 19 July and running until 19 October, the ‘Visioni del Sud’ exhibition programme – launched alongside the 20th ‘Festa di Cinema del reale e dell’irreale’ – brings the halls of the Castello Volante to life.
‘Visioni del Sud’, curated by Francesco Maggiore and Paolo Pisanelli and designed by Maurizio Buttazzo, is a comprehensive programme of artist residencies and exhibition itineraries spread throughout the Castle of Corigliano d’Otranto, which aims to support contemporary artistic production by drawing on historical or recently established archives, artistic research and practice to create new imaginaries, transforming Castello Volante into a hub for experimentation and, at the same time, a space for social engagement driven by an ethical as well as an aesthetic vision.
Leading international artists and emerging talents contribute across the board to a reflection on key issues of our time, from the fragile beauty of nature to gender identities, touching upon the major events of history as embodied in people’s lives.
The Tabaccaia Hall, which in recent years has already hosted leading figures in contemporary photography such as Letizia Battaglia, William Klein, Franco Pinna, Cecilia Mangini and Arturo Zavattini, this year presents the travels of the American photojournalist of Italian origin, Lou Dematteis.
Five countries, thousands of kilometres across the world’s hotspots where ‘history unfolds’, and a galaxy of faces, communities, and places – both famous and forgotten – that bring the story of the world to life. A journey spanning over four decades in search of reality, from the suburbs of San Francisco to the villages of Nicaragua, Vietnam and Ecuador, via the ‘places of his roots’ in Italy.
This is the journey of the American photojournalist of Italian descent, Lou Dematteis, recounted in the anthology *Five From One*. Five countries, five stories, edited by Claudio Domini and Paolo Pisanelli. The exhibition brings together for the first time five different series of photographs from five different parts of the world (Italy, Vietnam, Ecuador, Nicaragua and California), taken by Lou Dematteis between 1972 and 2003, spanning his entire professional career, comprising a total of around one hundred representative images.
One of his photographs (on display in the exhibition) succeeded in revealing to the world, in no uncertain terms, the Reagan administration’s involvement in the ‘dirty war’ against the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua (the work earned him a mention at the World Press Photo awards and inclusion in the ‘Photos of the Year’ selections of the *New York Times* and the National Press Photographers Association).
The exhibition offers a preview of the project ‘A journey back. A return journey’, the major exhibition due to open on 6 December 2023 at the Museo Trastevere in Rome, dedicated exclusively to the photographs taken by Dematteis between 1972 and 1980 during his ‘journeys to his roots’ in Italy, as he explored places of family memory and Italian culture.
View the section dedicated to exhibitions at Castello Volante
https://ilcastellovolante.it/eventi/mostre/
The exhibition route winds its way through the entire castle, amongst 16th-century towers, stately halls, medieval moats and the underground passages of the ancient manor of Corigliano d’Otranto.
‘Visioni del Sud’ is a journey made up of stories and experiences, such as that recounted in the site-specific exhibition ‘Gli asini dotti’, featuring photographs by Marcello Moscara. Along the final kilometres of the Via Francigena, a donkey named Bartolo and his faithful companion Martino lead a group of artists along the roads leading to Finibus Terrae, where pilgrims once set sail for the Holy Land. Bathed in warm, blinding light, a photographer, two musicians, two film-makers and a poet traverse the Salento region, encountering situations that lie somewhere between the expected and the unexpected, feeling every single step conquer every metre of ground.
Identity, places, rituals, and the conflict between the need to belong and the need to express one’s uniqueness are among the open questions posed by *Visioni del Sud*, which are reflected in the photographic exhibitions by various guest artists.
Photography and artistic research can become tools of emancipation against gender discrimination: this is the aim of *Queer è ora* by Alessia Rollo, curated by Transparent, Big Sur, 73100Gaya, an artistic and social research programme that aims to tell the stories and experiences of fifteen individuals and groups belonging to the LGBTQIA+ community. The project, which begins with the photographic exhibition, aims to launch a targeted communication campaign highlighting the important work carried out by anti-discrimination centres nationwide, which provide spaces and services to support the queer community.
*La Candelora a Montevergine* by Alessandro Gattuso chronicles the traditional gathering of the queer community at the Sanctuary of Montevergine, where the Neapolitan queer community has for centuries celebrated Mamma Schiavona, the ‘Great Mother’ of femminielli and LGBTQ+ people. A pagan festival where identities, bodies and genders are free, unique and self-determined in their non-conformity: people play music and dance non-stop for as long as their muscles hold out, sharing space, food, bodies and gestures.
*Restart-Restanze*, photographs by Maurizio Fiorino, is a project inspired by Vito Teti’s essay *La restanza*; the author explores his own identity as a native of Calabria who later moved to the United States. In this work, exploring the theme of the double and the overlapping of the self, past and present merge, through analogue photographs taken between 2010 and 2012 in New York, alongside a series of portraits still in progress.
Landscapes of memory are evoked decades later through the photographic installation *Respiri di pietra*, featuring works by Leonello Bertolucci and Giuseppe Palumbo. In this site-specific installation, created for ‘Visioni del Sud’ in the Tower of Sant’Antonio, the vision of a contemporary photographer, Leonello Bertolucci, engages in dialogue with that of a photographer from the past, Giuseppe Palumbo. Palumbo, the ‘cycling photographer’, through his passionate work, has left Salento an extraordinary legacy of images depicting the region, comprising 1,740 glass plates taken between 1907 and 1959. This precious archive, owned by the Castromediano Museum in Lecce, is being brought to life through research, study, reinterpretation, new creations and exhibitions. Here, the exhibition offers a comparison of Salento’s megalithic sites – dolmens and menhirs – the ‘stone prayers’ captured in the photographs of the two photographers.
At the centre of the circular tower stands ‘DNA’, a contemporary menhir by the sculptor Renzo Buttazzo, in all its symbolic and material power. By penetrating and reshaping matter, Renzo Buttazzo offers a vision of a new imaginary space, a new world, shaped by humankind and its perceptions. Composite works, multiples, clones, modules: an intimate representation of primary elements. Nature and its transformations remain the dividing line, within which the sculptor explores to the very limits of perceptual space, evoking sensations of precariousness and the improbability of forms.
The exploration of materials and that linked to ancestral symbols that span life and death lies at the heart of several works on display.
Among these is *Between Earth and Sky* by Viviana Casaluci. There is a space between Earth and Sky: it is the space in which the voice of our true identity manifests itself, in which the many parts of ourselves live, just like these ceramic creatures. Each of them represents the forces that animate us; each invites us to reflect on the power of Creativity, understood as a vital force, a transformative energy that animates us. Each creature is an invitation to never stop exploring ourselves, to re-create our reality every day, grounding ourselves in the Earth and connecting with the Sky in full harmony with these two dimensions: the visible and the invisible.
‘Reliquie’ by Alice Graziadio is a melting pot of objects, figures and stories that evoke an exoticism devoid of specific connotations; works that serve as vessels, all linked by the same aim: to evoke the transformations and cross-fertilisation in which we are immersed. Matter as a means of engaging with reality and bringing it to life. Works that become custodians of preservation, ensuring the objects within remain intact and continue to exist in the near future, much like the rain of ash, dust and lapilli that fell on Pompeii.
The ‘Visioni del Sud’ programme consists of experiences that have taken place at the Castello Volante throughout the year and which have involved the community of Corigliano d’Otranto in co-creation activities, providing an opportunity to explore hidden aspects of their reality.
This is recounted in *L’immagine invisibile* (The Invisible Image), an exhibition of analogue photographs curated by *linea*, created by visual artist Alice Caracciolo with pupils from the “Corigliano Melpignano Castrignano” Comprehensive School as part of the project ‘Vedere l’invisibile’, conceived and produced by Big Sur as part of the national ‘Cinema e Immagini per la Scuola’ programme. By constructing fully functional cardboard cameras and utilising the pinhole principle, the pupils created a personal photographic narrative on the theme of the invisible.
‘Visioni del Sud’ also flows through the spaces of Nuvole, the bistro at Castello Volante – a sort of ‘workshop of taste’ that ‘changes its skin’ every year, hosting the forms and imaginations of artists in dialogue with one another.
This time, in ‘Fleur’, Stefania De Francesco’s ceramics interact with Alessandra De Cristofaro’s illustrations. Different techniques and materials, united by a floral theme, take us on a dreamlike journey through fantastical landscapes inhabited by fairies and mythological figures in an all-female world.
The works of ‘Visioni del Sud’ come to life in unconventional spaces, following their contours whilst, at the same time, altering our perception of them. Thus, even a garden at the Castle can become a sea in which luminous fish swim freely.
Nicola Genco’s installation *Nel loro grande mare* is both a reference to and a tribute to the greatness of Lucio Dalla, who wrote the lyrics to the song ‘Com’è profondo il mare’ whilst in the sea off Puglia (at the Tremiti Islands) – a drama that, almost half a century on, remains as vivid and relevant as ever. The swimming of the suspended fish reflects, by contrast, the disaster that anthropocentrism has wrought at every level – human, social, cultural, spiritual and environmental – and the ecological crisis is a clear manifestation of this downward spiral.
