In Palermo, the solo exhibition Living by Luciana Picchiello

The Regional Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Palermo presents at the Chapel of the Coronation the solo exhibition Living by artist Luciana Picchiello, curated by Lorenzo Canova.

In this space, the artist composes a poetic tale on the thread of memory, with sculptural works, installations, and photographs that unfold between the nave, the hypostyle hall and the Coronation Loggia, in a path that becomes a testimony to realities and truths that must never be forgotten.

Says the Museum’s director, Luigi Biondo: “The breathlessness and disbelief caused by the suspended and difficult period such as the one that has passed due to the Covid 19 pandemic can and must be removed with art exhibitions and events, very strong means to lead us toward a liberating redemption. Concrete help comes to the museum from Luciana Picchiello, who is always looking for new artistic experiences aimed at stimulating the senses and the soul. The Molisian artist is a child of the Mediterranean and of her time, with the skillful use of themes and techniques she has emphasized strong themes such as those related to the tragic fate of those who, fleeing from problematic living conditions, risk their lives to try to land in more dignified living conditions.”

Thus, the memories collected by the artist about the horrors of the Shoah become testimonies of the horrors that are renewed daily in the Mediterranean and find form in the matriculation numbers, clothing, barbed wire, and dried flowers that make up her works. In the works Vivere II-III-IV the clothes, similarly to Christian Boltanski ’s work for the Museo Riso’s collection, are devoid of the bodies, but still seem to contain traces of them between the folds. They are enclosed in cases, like icons, but with barbed wire, a symbol and instrument of death.

In the work Living V, the wreath of crumbling dried flowers, as curator Lorenzo Canova says, seems “to want to remind us that art, despite its apparent fragility, still manages to give meaning to things, even the most tragic and difficult to bring to light.”

Luciana Picchiello also confronts the harsh presence of death, photographing the corpses of the Catacombs of the Capuchins in Palermo, as a tribute to Gesualdo Bufalino’s painful and intense narrative.

The meaning of the exhibition, however, as Lorenzo Canova writes in the exhibition catalog, is not only that of the end, but also that of the possibility of life and rebirth, perhaps alluded to in the colored star that stands out in the hypostyle hall of this path, in a dialogue between macrocosm and microcosm composed of Arturo’s astral and chromatic geometry, or in the bronze Living of the Loggia, where the heart seems to represent the sign of an as yet uninterrupted vital flow, from the archetypal value of the old ex-votos.

The exhibition is open until June 30.

For all information you can visit the official website of the Palermo Regional Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art.

In Palermo, the solo exhibition Living by Luciana Picchiello

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