Luigi Presicce transforms Siena's ex-Edicola into an aquarium of pop memories

On May 9,La Mamma, a site-specific installation by artist Luigi Presicce (Porto Cesareo - Lecce, 1976), was inaugurated at theex-Edicola di Siena, which will remain open until June 20, 2026. The project constitutes the seventh episode of the exhibition cycle hosted in the space managed by the Giallo Menta aps association, as part of a programming path dedicated to contemporary art.

The work was conceived specifically for the former Edicola, a small piece of architecture located in Siena’s Le Terrazze neighborhood that was once used for the sale of newspapers and subsequently remained in a state of abandonment for several years. As of 2024, the space has been affected by a culturally-based urban regeneration process promoted by Giallo Menta aps through contemporary art projects. Since January 2025, the former Edicola has also been included among the Contemporary Places of the General Directorate for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture.

Presicce’s installation directly intervenes in the architecture of the space, which is rethought as a scenographic device. The intervention proposes a reflection on the theme of birth, constructed through imagery that recalls the pop culture of the 1970s and some of its devices of consumption and dissemination. In fact, the set-up environment simulates a marine context that can be likened to an aquarium, populated by references to the so-called sea monkeys, organisms that became the object of commercial dissemination and popular curiosity during that period.

The work stems from a phase of research by the artist and finds fulfillment in the reactivation of the interior space of the ex-Edicola, which becomes the site of a narrative linked to an initial and undefined moment, associated with the very concept of origin. Sea monkeys are used as an iconographic and cultural reference, recalling a production of popularized objects and devices widespread in the 1970s, often characterized by a playful and pseudo-scientific component. Other consumer objects that exploited the dimension of wonder and domestic experimentation, such as X-ray spectacles and other instruments, were also marketed in the same cultural context.

In this perspective, a possible reading of voyeurism as a perceptual dynamic related to the prolonged observation of a delimited microcosm, in which one waits for the emergence of minimal or imperceptible events, is also recalled.

“In the newsstand, however, time stands still; a mother has laid her children and, heedless of her nakedness, waits to see them mature and grow. A castle house that looks like a cathedral, or a trullo in the Apulian tradition, is the backdrop to this waiting, while the mother fans herself with a leaf as if it were a fan, assuming the wind can really exist underwater.”

La Mamma is also part of the Close-UP #2 project, an initiative that aims to offer young participants access to culture and visual art through the eyes of artists involved in mediation practices. The project promotes education, inclusion and cultural welfare, activating paths in which artists work as mediators of historical and ancient languages preserved in the National Museums of Siena and the Cabinet of Drawings and Prints of the Municipal Library of the Intronati of Siena, with the aim of translating them and making them accessible in the contemporary world.

In this framework, the former Edicola takes on the role of an active space within a process of cultural transformation. The intervention is part of a strategy initiated by Giallo Menta aps since 2023, aimed at the reactivation of a building that has been disused for decades and its reconversion through contemporary art practices. The Close-UP #2 project is carried out in partnership with the National Museums of Siena, the Biblioteca Comunale degli Intronati di Siena, Cooperativa Sociale Promocultura, Alioth Group and Arnera. The initiative is promoted and funded by the Monte dei Paschi di Siena Foundation, University of Siena and Community Hub as part of the “Vie d’uscita culturali” call for proposals.

Luigi Presicce transforms Siena's ex-Edicola into an aquarium of pop memories

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