The first edition of a new contemporary art festival arrives in Calabria: Art Rizoma

From July 9 to September 20, 2022, three locations in Calabria (Gerace, Roccella Ionica and Santa Caterina dello Ionio) will come alive with great contemporary art. In fact, the first edition of Art Rizoma is scheduled to take place in these three localities, an initiative promoted by the Rocco Guglielmo Foundation of Catanzaro in collaboration with the municipal administrations of Gerace, Roccella Ionica and Santa Caterina dello Ionio, with the participation of Civita Exhibitions and Museums.

Art Rizoma is conceived as a contemporary art festival involving international artists to reaffirm the belief in creativity as a driver of cultural, economic development and social and identity cohesion. The exhibition was created as an annual event, which in the 2022 edition, curated by Alessandro Romanini and Rocco Guglielmo, takes the title 8 Minutes from the Sun (the time it takes for sunlight to reach the earth) and intends to respond to a number of pressing needs that have manifested over the last period in the artistic-cultural and socio-political landscape. The pandemic conjuncture, with its associated physical distancing and its technological drifts, combined with war events and the widespread climate of “cancel culture,” have created a macroscopic distance between the public, artwork and artists, imposing the urgency of a rewriting of the canons of art and culture fruition, which has affected especially museums, galleries and places deputed to the preservation and promotion of art.

The initiative, which takes its name (“Rhizome”) from a botanical phenomenon in which plants develop in unfavorable conditions, proliferating and giving rise to new nodes independently of the core, aims to highlight the resilience of art and its ability to produce social relations, stimulate thought and create a sense of identity and social cohesion, especially in complex historical conjunctures. Reversing the dynamics, it is the museum and art that go out to meet the public, bringing works of art by international artists of various generations and styles to non-deputed places but with a high testimonial, historical-artistic and memory value of the territories, extending the peculiar activities of the museum institution in a territorially extended and socially inclusive dimension. Light, understood in its various declinations, is the theme of this 2022 edition and takes on relevant symbolic values in the places of worship in Gerace or in the Prince’s Palace in Roccella Ionica, or in the Palace of France in Santa Caterina dello Ionio, where the light of the sun floods the sites and offers an unobstructed view of the coast and the Mediterranean, “the mare nostrum” cradle of the cultures of Europe and Africa. In Calabria, where the echo of Magna Graecia and its culture “Ab Homero Principium” echoes everywhere, artists converge enthusiastically, interacting with the rich local history.

The artists exhibited in this first edition of Art Rizoma are Arman, Christian Balzano, Bankeri, Roberto Barni, Cesare Berlingeri, Bertozzi & Casoni, Sandro Chia, Vittorio Corsini, Wim Delvoye, Pino Deodato, Chiara Dynys, Brice Esso, Nicola Evangelisti, Roberto Fanari, Giovanni Longo, Gonçalo Mabunda, Masbedo, Gianfranco Meggiato, Veronica Montanino, Gian Marco Montesano, Alexey Morozov, Luigi Ontani, David Paolinetti, Massimiliano Pelletti, Pino Pinelli, Alex Pinna, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Antonio Pujia Veneziano, Turi Simeti, Massimo Sirelli, Antonio Tropiano, Giuseppe Uncini, Zeroottouno.

The event spread over the territory aims to encourage the public on a path of joint discovery, of singular works of contemporary art and the history and genius loci that characterizes the Calabrian places that host them, bringing together art, cultural tourism and territorial promotion, guided by the collaboration between public and private institutions. An initiative that is sustained by the unwavering faith, in the “Beauty that will continue to save the world,” paraphrasing Dostoevsky... even if today the Russian author turns out to be hated by the cultural intelligentsia. During the 2022 edition, again in the vein of the “8 Minutes” that characterizes it, NFTs linked to the three exhibition venues will be coined. This will be one of the first series of NFTs - artistic tokens based on blockchain technologies - created in Calabria, curated by Civita Exhibitions and Museums with the collaboration of the Rocco Guglielmo Foundation. Locations: Gerace (Basilica, Church of St. Francis of Assisi, Church of St. Catherine, Church of the Annunziatella, Church of St. Martin, Church of St. Michael de’ Latinis); Roccella Ionica (Carafa Castle); Santa Caterina dello Ionio (Palazzo di Francia).

The first edition of a new contemporary art festival arrives in Calabria: Art Rizoma

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