Uwe Jäntsch leaves Palermo and the Vucciria after 19 years. His last intervention will be destroyed

Eventually Uwe Jäntsch (Bregenz, 1970), the Austrian artist who had settled in Palermo’s Piazza Garraffello and gained national notoriety for his whimsical interventions that revitalized a square prey to decay, stimulating nightlife and the opening of businesses, will have to leave the city. The new owners of Palazzo Lo Mazzarino, the building in which the artist had settled with his partner Costanza Lanza di Scalea, have in fact ordered the building’s eviction after reporting the couple for squatting.

Uwe Jäntsch then called a press conference this morning in Piazza Garraffello, during which he said, “Today is my last day after almost nineteen years. The story closes because now comes another time in Garraffello Square, where my main speech was held.” In fact, the artist had created numerous artistic interventions in the square and inside Palazzo Lo Mazzarino, where he had installed his home-atelier. During the conference he expressed his intention to destroy his intervention, the Clearing Room he had created inside the building.

The building was purchased a few months ago by an entrepreneurial group that intends to renovate it for residential use (work, however, has not yet started). The other tenants had already left their homes, while Uwe Jäntsch and Costanza Lanza di Scalea remained in the building. As for the allegations of squatting, Costanza Lanza di Scalea said, “We are not squatters, we had a lease with the former landlady. We were reported for squatting on January 15, 2018, then the eviction came. But no one had told us anything before January.” Uwe’s partner then charges, “it all happened in less than two months and the eviction did not take into account what Uwe did for the Vucciria and Piazza Garraffello, a place he loved. We wonder how it is possible that a group of entrepreneurs, with an amount that does not even reach 1 million euros, for a project that costs about 10 million euros (so it is clear that the remaining 9 is public money) want to create a residential area at the expense of the whole community with money that is not private, but public. This is an act that is absolutely outlawed.”

To those who asked what they will do now, Costanza replied, “We will not stay in Palermo, we will go abroad, by our own choice. We only ask the city of Palermo that there be transparency on the Garraffello Square operation.” In these hours, a number of personalities from the art world visited the home of Uwe Jäntsch before the destruction of the Compensation Room. In particular, the artist Jürgen Weishäupl, the celebrated U.S. photographer Spencer Tunick, who is the protagonist of a solo exhibition in Palermo these days, and Gerald Matt, director of the Kunsthalle in Vienna, curator of Tunick’s exhibition, visited.

Pictured: Uwe Jäntsch and Costanza Lanza di Scalea. Ph. Credit Lorenzo Gatto

Uwe Jäntsch leaves Palermo and the Vucciria after 19 years. His last intervention will be destroyed

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