A bright cliff: in Matera, Mimmo Jodice rereads André Chastel with his Neapolitan shots

After being set up at theItalian Cultural Institute in Brussels for two months, the exhibition Le Savoir sur la Falaise will move to Matera, in the spaces of the Palazzo Lanfranchi Museum. This is a solo exhibition by Mimmo Jodice (Naples, 1934) that displays 35 shots with which the Neapolitan photographer has immortalized the places and stories of theSuor Orsola Benincasa University of Naples, Italy’s oldest free university. The title of the exhibition refers to a phrase with which art historian André Chastel compared the places of the ancient monastic citadel of Suor Orsola to “a nest of flowers and birds above a bright cliff devoted to knowledge.” The citadel of Suor Orsola, now a modern university campus on its way to becoming a UNESCO-certified “World Heritage Site,” houses four museums inside (the Science Museum, the Pagliara Museum, the Museum of theUniversity Opera and the Toy Museum), three churches, numerous gardens (including the splendid Five Continents Botanical Garden) an art gallery, antiquarian libraries, historical archives, collections of silks, musical scores, porcelain and prints.

Renamed the Citadel of Knowledge and housed in an architectural complex spanning 33,000 m², the University was founded in the early seventeenth century, at the height of the Counter-Reformation, by the Neapolitan intellectual mystic Orsola Benincasa, founder of the Romite and Oblate of the Immaculate Conception (now the Theatine Sisters). Over time the institute, governed by a lay moral body, has seen its educational offerings gradually increase and today represents a “unicum” in the European scenario that allows students to enjoy from its historic terraces and gardens, always accessible to students, the incomparable panorama of Naples and its Gulf.

The lens of Mimmo Jodice, one of the greatest protagonists of Italian photography, “explores” architectural spaces, the history of places, populated with the facts and people who built it, proposing a journey through time that leads directly to the future: a memory that aspires to become exemplum, to constantly translate its heritage into the languages of humanity of today and tomorrow.

The exhibition will be inaugurated on Feb. 18 at 12 p.m. with speeches by Marta Ragozzino, director of the Polo Museale della Basilicata, Lucio d’Alessandro, Rector of theSuor Orsola Benincasa University and Vice President of the Conference of Rectors of Universities Italiane, Salvatore Adduce, director of the Matera-Basilicata 2019 Foundation, and Pierluigi Lene de Castris, director of the School of Specialization in Historical and Artistic Heritage at Suor Orsola Benincasa University. The exhibition will remain open until March 17 and can be visited at museum hours: Monday through Sunday from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m., and Wednesdays from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. For more info, see the Polo Museale della Basilicata website.

A bright cliff: in Matera, Mimmo Jodice rereads André Chastel with his Neapolitan shots

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