Curated by Agostino Riitano in collaboration with Vincenzo de Bellis.
The SprigionArti project gives life to an exhibition of contemporary art in the cells of the former prison of Procida on the occasion of the year as Italian Capital of Culture. The desire is to create a dynamic laboratory, which imagines the birth of a new museum nucleus, convinced that the latter is a living entity functional to the cultural and democratic development of the community and the urban regeneration of a monumental architecture that has lost its function of use over time.
We asked five major artists to imagine a relational perspective with the former penal colony, a symbolic place and testimony to the social, political and urban history of the island, to investigate new resonances of meaning between the historical dimension of imprisonment and isolation and the modern vocation of openness and sharing.
The exhibition takes place in the large rooms on the first level of the sixteenth-century floor plan of the Palazzo d'Avalos. The first space hosts a work by Maria Thereza Alves; the second space, the chapel of the former prison structure, houses Jan Fabre's work "The Catacombs of Dead Street Dogs"; the third space houses William Kentridge's video installation, visible from outside the cell through the bars; and the fourth space, with a glimpse of the Mediterranean landscape, will host works by Francesco Arena and Andrea Anastasio.
