Napoli oggi tra spiritualità e desiderio di riscatto

Sonia Lenzi e Giovanni Scotti

a cura di Maria Livia Brunelli

Intoduction

Two artists who use photography for an analysis Napoli nowadays . Sonia Lenzi recontextualizes the Lari, roman deities that guarded the family, inside the votive shrines of the historic neighborhoods of the city, putting in relation with contemporary sacredness. The past NATO base of Bagnoli, immortalized in its abandonment, becomes for Giovanni Scotti a symbol of a desired urban regeneration. Two realities full of emotion that come from Napoli to Ferrara for the Festival di Internazionale, one of the most significant initiatives of the Italian cultural scene that takes place from September 29th to October 1st, with the intent to recreate an entire number of International live: journalists, writers and protagonists of the cultural world dialogue on issues of great relevance and relevance social, economic and political, arousing the interest and the involvement of a large public.
Sonia Lenzi tells about her work Lares Familiares: “Family relationships are the first to compare and domestic reality is our starting point for the adventure called life. The meaning of our existence is therefore inherent in those relationships and in those places. In the Roman world the Lari were gods who ensured protection and fortune to the family they belonged to and that occupied a place of honor in the heart of the house inside a particular shrines, the lararium. Their cult and lararia have a strong relationship with the difficult reality of today's Napoli and with the votive shrines in the old neighborhoods of the city.
These are devotional altars, cavity built for family members, a sort of little temples with the photograph of the deceased and sacred images, flowers, objects linked to a spontaneous religiosity. There are people who are victims of road accidents, others killed by stray bullets or the Camorra, like Annalisa Durante, used as a human shield during an attack. The chronological and conceptual distance between the two phenomena is canceled by me: the Lares of the Archaeological Museum collections become small three-dimensional photographic objects that I have recreated, that some families of the Quartieri Spagnoli, the Rione Sanità, the Forcella and Mercato insert in the devotional altars, that they have cared for ". The Sonia Lenzi’s Lare has been permanently entrusted to the families or communities they have accepted, to bring good luck, directly from ancient Rome, during a performative delivery action (which took place on 6 July 2017), which was attended by the Directors of the Archaeological Museum of Napoli Paolo Giulerini and the Director of MADRE Andrea Viliani. the performance documented through an unpublished video for the first time presented to the public, together with photographs of some devotional altars, photographic objects and larari created by the artist. The project had the Matronato of the Donnaregina Foundation for Contemporary Arts, in addition to the patronage of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and the City of Naples. Giovanni Scotti instead tells the reality of a large abandoned complex, the ex Nato di Bagnoli, near Napoli. A place mythologized by the artist since childhood. Scotti say: “when I was a child I heard about NATO as an incredible and inaccessible place, but I didn’t know what exactly it was and what was done in there. What I knew was that you could buy cheap peanut butter, marshmallows, Marlboros, TVs, VCRs, cameras and stereos. All American stuff. Inaccessible if you did not know someone inside. Until one evening, during the concert of Edoardo Bennato, the first and last event organized there after the farewell of the Americans, I slipped into the rooms on the upper floors and finally I saw. I saw the light of an era that was fading and another that from the past illuminated my memories, when I imagined that place full of mystery and magic. The lights of the street lamps penetrated the windows like giant yellow moths that rested on my heart, while all around the air still smelled of computers and documents just transferred, of the letterhead with the fourteenth wind star of the JFC- Naples, but also some sweets. Like the box of Cinnamon Hearts in the shape of a heart, still sealed, that slept forgotten in a half-closed locker, next to a CD with the writing "NATO SECRET". The ex Nato di Bagnoli is a place with a burning history: owned by the Banco di Napoli Foundation and originally intended for the reception of destitute children, after the war it was requisitioned by the Americans and from 1954 to 2013 it was the headquarters of the Supreme Command of NATO, the most important in Southern Europe. After the farewell of the troops, the Municipality of Napoli proposed using the complex for socio-cultural purposes, accusing the Foundation of pursuing instead a project to build houses. But it was then the same Municipality to stipulate an agreement in which it renounces the idea of a large area available to the city, encouraging speculation. A story that is unveiled in its raw reality, but with a sensitivity and a poem that elevates the interiors of this immense complex to the authority of a contemporary cathedral. The same suspended and rarefied atmospheres can be found in the series of photographs dedicated to Edenlandia, the first theme park built in Europe in 1965, in the suburbs of Napoli, in total abandonment since 2013. The volume that collects the shots, The City of Disenchantment, recently presented at the MADRE in Naples by Andrea Viliani and Giovanni Chiaramonte, unveils the entire investigation on this surreal place.