Man becomes a traveler, protagonist of a mandatory and dramatic journey of those forced to leave their land.
For the second appointment in the mediation space 5 – the project of contemporary art promoted by the Dicastery for the culture and education of the Vatican, conceived on the occasion of the Jubilee 2025 and entrusted to the curation of Cristiana Perrella for the first year of activity – Adrian Paci chooses the sculpture Home (2001), The concentration of his research into the transforming power of the journey, able to produce suggestively imaginary.
Framed in a window gallery that is visible 24 hours a day via Della Conciliazione, a few steps from St. Peter’s Square, with the references to the Christian iconography of passion, often returning to the path of the artist – of Pasolini -Chapel (2005) A Crotch (2011) For the church of San Bartolomeo in Milan – Home Dialogue with the holiness of the place.
He crosses the path that leads the pilgrims to San Pietro and the holy door, and winks in the history of old art, which the artist has learned since his first formation.
Adrian Paci, No Man is an island, Allestimento
No man is an island It is the title of the project that embraces sculpture Homeand also a few meters away from Via della reconciliation The bell toll on the waves (2024), a video installation set up by the artist in the historic Sixtine jobs of the monumental complex of Santo Spirito in Sassia.
This old place of care and welcome dates from 727 AD, when King Sassone Ina founded the Schola Saxonum on founder for pilgrims aimed at the grave of San Pietro.
Produced by the Giorgio Pace Foundation and exhibited for the first time in Italy, the work was inspired by an episode that really happened: in 1566 in Termoli, during a Turkish attack, the looters tried to steal the bell of Santa Caterina, who took the sailors in the event of danger. A useless attempt, because the bell ends during transport at sea and the boat on which he traveled sinks. By remembering this story, Paci designed a bell for a floating platform on the sea for Termoli, and ensured that, at least ideally, the historic from the seabed came into existence. The Albanian artist documented the entire operation with a video in which the bells are generated by the movement of the waves, sometimes sweet, sometimes violent.
Characterized by a strong symbolic value, The bell toll on the waves It refers to a loss, but also to a suggestive presence, the resonance of which is reinforced by the context of history in which it is installed. The dialogue between an already known work, one of the first that the artist announces at the start of his path, and a new production, emphasizes the consistency with which Adrian Paci has always thought about these issues and offers us a story that strengthens personal memory, spirituality and attention for the great issues of our time.
Adrian Paci, No Man is an island, Allestimento
The title of the exhibition – No man is an island – It is a quote from the sixteenth -century English poet John Women, derived from meditation XVII (devotions on rising occasions, 1624), who reads “Not a man is an island, entirely in himself; every man is a piece of the continent, part of the whole (…) the death of a man reduces me because I am involved in humanity, and therefore never ask for the bell to play; it sounds to you”. An invitation to recognize the common connectedness and mutual responsibility, to establish values for the jubilee and for the entire programming of reconciliation 5, which wants to be – as desired by cardinal José Tolentino de Mendonça, prefect of the dicatery – a space that is open to spirituality, critical of art.
In the fall, the programming will continue with the committees to two other international artists, who will continue the research into the big themes of our time through art.
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