Genoa, celebrated street art Ozmo revisits Canova's Amore e Psiche: a work for the victims of the Morandi Bridge

Ozmo (Pontedera, 1975), one of Italy’s most celebrated street artists (with urban art interventions in the world’s most important cities, from New York to Shanghai, London to Paris, Havana to Beirut, to his credit), has recently created a site-specific mural in Genoa, just a few dozen meters from the red zone evacuated after the collapse of the Morandi Bridge on August 14, 2018, dedicated to the victims, the Certosa neighborhood, and the city.

The work is located on a wall from which one can still see the rubble closing Via Fillak, above which the bridge stood. The work is a reimagining of Antonio Canova’sLove and Psyche lying, the very famous sculpture preserved in the Louvre: Moved by the desire to design a work capable not only of relating to place, but also of connecting to the emotional state of the community and people and being consolatory without being rhetorical, Ozmo chose Canova’s masterpiece to create a powerful image that evokes an ascending and saving motion, as opposed to the descending motion of collapse and separation.

For the depiction of the Canova group, Ozmo chose an angle that highlights the act that sanctions the rescue of Psyche by Cupid, the mutual comfort, the awakening, the newfound union, the embrace between the two protagonists of Apuleius’ fable that ideally extends to the victims and the entire neighborhood. The work is completed by the inscription This is site specific, affixed like a Dada gesture above the faces of the two deities: a tribute to the Certosa neighborhood, to the context in which the mural was created, an invitation to dialogue with the place and to reflect also on the practice of urban art.

The work was created as part of On The Wall, the Genoa City Council project carried out in collaboration with the Linkinart Association to remember the victims of the viaduct tragedy.

In the photo: the work by Ozmo (ph. Credit Matteo Fontana)

Genoa, celebrated street art Ozmo revisits Canova's Amore e Psiche: a work for the victims of the Morandi Bridge

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