Mantua, street art invades an entire neighborhood to break down borders

From August 31 to September 6, 2020, the fifth edition of Without Frontiers, Lunetta in Color, the contemporary art festival born in 2016 on the occasion of Mantua Italian Capital of Culture, will be held in Mantua. Each year the festival involves Italian and international artists who create urban and public art works with the aim of redeveloping and enhancing the Lunetta neighborhood, in the northern suburbs of the city.

Without Frontiers is organized by the Caravan SetUp association and is curated by Simona Gavioli with the scientific contribution of Lavinia Bottini, in collaboration with the cultural association Il Cerchio e le Gocce, the support of the Municipality of Mantua and the contribution of Tea.

As the title itself emphasizes, the festival is a hymn to thebreaking down of borders through art, in favor of cultural continuity capable of uniting the center of the city with its periphery. An artistic, social and cultural experiment that continues to grow.

This edition, Bada al senso e le parole baderan a se stessi, will focus on the world of Alice in Wonderland and Gilles Deleuze ’s analysis of it in the text Logic of Sense, in which the French philosopher follows Alice on her journey through a world governed by paradox and different forms of reality. The artists involved, including Aris, Andrea Casciu, Corn79, Howlers and Kiki Skipi, will create surreal imagery by interpreting Lewis Carroll’s themes. For the first time, the district will feature two combos: the first in August by Aris and Corn79, the second in October by Kiki Skipi and Andrea Casciu.

In particular, themes of communion between different cultures, integration skills and diversity awareness will be addressed.

“When you enter Lunetta,” comments curator Simona Gavioli, “you find yourself immersed in a teeming universe of colors. Crossing the Expanded Underpass, a work painted by Corn79, one is overwhelmed by the warm tones of reds, yellows and orange and is transported inside a wonderful and surreal neighborhood. The Bianco-Valente artists’ inscription that towers over the top of the first building - ”I want to meet you“ - makes one feel alive the call of a community ready to welcome and curious about new entrants into this small world. One feels a bit like Alice chasing the White Rabbit, who finds herself catapulted into Wonderland. And just like Carroll’s world, Lunetta is inhabited by surreal beings: bears, swans, bees, exploding stars, horses emerging from the water, multicolored concrete blocks that seem to swirl and fall like the boulders in the vault of the Sala dei Giganti in Palazzo Te. Crossing the underpass is equivalent, then, to crossing the border and entering another world. Fantastic and surreal, where unconscious and desires come to life taking concrete and tangible forms. One finds oneself in another dimension where everything seems possible, where everything seems subverted and turned upside down. Gradually one slips into an alternative universe, where it is not the queen of hearts who reigns, but art that, pulsating, continues to give life to the entire neighborhood.”
"This year the journey of Without Frontiers,“ the curator continues, ”will therefore be beyond the boundaries of logic, in search of childlike, utopian and unreal universes. Imagination will be the useful means of transportation to cross the imaginary threshold of an inward exit. Through play, the absurd and the surreal everyone will return to feeling like a little Alice, living in her own world, where everything is absurd. “If I had a world as I like it, there everything would be absurd: nothing would be as it is, for everything would be as it is not, and vice versa! What is would not be and what is not would be.” Going back to childhood, then, and marveling at the little things, discovering the truth that lies in Carroll’s novels: all reality is founded on contradictory, and therefore paradoxical, conventions. The fantastic worlds, which only children can see and conceive, are in truth as real as they get precisely because they are inhabited by paradox. Lunetta’s thresholds are just like the little door discovered by Alice in one of the chapters of Carroll’s work, which guards, in addition to herself, that wonderful world to which the little protagonist wishes to have access: the world of beauty and creativity enclosed in Lunetta."

Other events are scheduled during the festival days, including dance, reading sessions, workshops, film screenings and fun activities.

Among this year’s novelties is the launch on GoFundMe platform of a crowdfunding campaign to support the festival; the funds raised will be used for planned expenses, such as the purchase of materials, rental of facilities for artists, communication and promotion.

Pictured is Corn79’s work created in the underpass (2018). Ph.Credit Livio Ninni

Mantua, street art invades an entire neighborhood to break down borders

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