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CERAMICA DI VIETRI
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Liu Jianhua Monumenti
Made in Cloister - Naples
The majolica monuments raised to sustain a multicolored Naples
Ceramica Francesco De Maio is pleased to support Monumenti, the exhibition by Liu Jianhua
curated by Demetrio Paparoni and realized for the Made in Cloister Foundation
In the heart of ancient Naples, in the famous district of Porta Capuana, inside the small cloister of the Church of Santa Caterina in Formiello, an important example of the Neapolitan Renaissance, 23 columns of majolica rise as Monuments to become pedestals for bodies that are stories, that are travels, that are lives. Migrants. Men and women who crossed lands and seas and crossed the borders to start everything in an area that was not home anymore, not yet.
Liu Jianhua - one of the most representative Chinese artists of contemporary scenery - pays tribute to these figures and to this humanity, with Monumenti, the site specific work, curated by Demetrio Paparoni and realized for the Made in Cloister Foundation, whose founders Rosa Alba Impronta and Davide De Blasio for years has grafted art, culture and social fabric to give new life to the entire district of Porta Capuana. The exhibition is open to the public from Saturday December 8th at 10 am until next March 21st at the cloister of Santa Caterina in Formiello, the headquarters of the Foundation.
Monumenti. Twenty-three monumental structures about two meters high like large ceramic pedestals, hand-painted by the master decorators of Ceramica di Vietri Francesco De Maio on which are sculptures of migrants who have traveled all over the world and come to Naples where they now live and work. At the center of the cloister is a papier-mâché sculpture depicting a mother and her daughter. Life-size sculptures depicting authentic people all made by the artisan Carlo Nappi, an expert in traditional papier-mâché processing that unites the earth from Campania to China.
The bases of the monument are in monochrome ceramic covered with 13x13cm majolica. Each facade has a different color for a total of 92 shades: orange, light blue, blue, yellow, gray, lilac, black, red, green, purple and so on. Columns like majestic ancient mosaics widely used in Naples in the 18th century to embellish the ancient churches and private homes of the nobles and then declined by the artist to authoritative decorative elements as a symbol of nobility in support of an indigent social class.
“The production and use of ceramic tiles in Naples - says Liu Jianhua - has a long and rich history. We could still see some of those fantastic decorations now in Pompeii. I hope to continue this remarkable history in Monumenti and to overthrow the stereotyped image of the monument.”
All around the installation, 2.000 white porcelain flowers of Capodimonte whose delicacy evokes the fragility of the lives of migrants, created by the artist in the workshop of the artisan Pasquale De Palma and then produced by the students and the master potters of the Istituto ad Indirizzo Raro della Ceramica e della Porcellana Caselli - De Sanctis, continuators of the handicraft tradition of the Real Fabbrica della Porcellana in Capodimonte. To mark even more the intention of Liu Jianhua to make his Monumenti alive is the choice to open the exhibition with a performance in the preview of December 7th, during which to rise on the pedestals will be the migrants themselves.
Monumenti is the result of a meeting and a relationship - just as happens to the communities as a result of the migration - between the artist and the popular and multiethnic district of Porta Capuana. During his stay in Naples in January 2018, Liu Jianhua met the migrants who have been living for years and culturally hybridize this territory and with the local ceramic and paper-mâché artisans. Hence an exhibition that is itself contamination, just like the theme assigned to it: real bodies and bodies realized in papier-mache, video and performance, social and private themes, oriental and local culture intertwine, generating an invasion of lives and memories that cross the entire exhibition space. Behind the "Monumenti", a video in which the stories and memories of these men and women are stitched together, which are not only the object of the work but subjects to which the artist wanted to leave their face and their voice through the screen.
The double thread that knots art to social themes makes Monumenti a work strongly linked to the goals and the mission of the Made in Cloister Foundation, fully shared by Ceramica Francesco De Maio: contaminating cultures, regenerating places, making art an instrument of social transformation.
“We are pleased to support the realization of Monuments, like the pedestals for the bodies that an artist like Liu Jianhua made protagonists giving their faces and voice for the first time - says Patrizia Famiglietti, Art Director of Ceramiche Francesco De Maio - In my first meeting with Liu Jianhua he told me that about Naples he only knew Pompeii and the Neapolitan football, but surely during his stay here he would have had the opportunity to know it and appreciate its many colors, as a famous song by Pino Daniele. Made all the colours of these real Naples in ceramic, it wasn’t easy. But the human component of our work has contributed greatly to the realization of the 92 nuances hand-painted by our master decorators.”
