“ Hanging  rags in the wind, artistic rags, rags…”

I was a bit reluctant to accept the appointment as artistic director of this event, since I have always preferred to manipulate the matter, but the prestige of the F. Santi Institute, the authoritativeness of the University, the close bond of affection with the free international Artists and the challenge we always issue, as artists, when we want to prove equal to the situation, have led me to this new experience.

The  Fernando Santi Institute itself has considered the opportunity of producing this artistic project, that is in the wake of our traditions and that helps us to understand the dynamics and the various forms of  “ Artistic Nomadism” in the world and consequently other aspects of today’s society, a different vision of globalization.

Joining the city events of “ Maggio dei Monumenti” has given me the occasion to inform our area about the setting up of a new Neapolitan branch of the Institute and its activities.

We have arranged a project that includes and reconciles different topics: nature, peace, tolerance, migratory flows, city, institutions, scarce resources, challenge to risk, and willingness to operate and be active.

Besides, it is also a coloured idea to succeed in inserting different games in an obsolete, codified, and ambiguous system, to have stories of other places and cultures told, to get together people from everywhere and ethnic groups, to play with our own Neapolitan language.

“Myths in the world” is the first collection of visual stories painted on free canvases hanging among the trees as  the“ hanging rags in the sun” in the lanes of our city, or as “hanging rags in the wind”.

They are about thirty waterproof paintings- installations by artists form different countries telling us stories of old times, mythology, contemporaneity, history, sagas, heroic deeds, genialities and superstitions.

They are stories, legends, traditions and artists’ inner relationships, who have contributed expressing their poetics, and to saw a wonderful seed in the Mediterranean spot, in the heart of Naples.

Moreover it is a sort of primeval game, through which, man takes possession of nature with more and more convulsive movements with more and more rhythmical sounds, with low, soft and then shouted words, hanging small and large “ artists rags”, as marks in a conquered land.

The viewers attend and join with their feeble presence, their warm rows, their eruptive moods the fertilization Mother Earth, the conquest of nature, the control over the natural enchantment.

Deceiving vanity in man’s service!

It is the fecundation of the being, keeping still in his time portion.

It is the fecundation of his own imaginary, fixed in a fairy tale, already told.

It is the fecundation of thee group game blocked by the old flattery.

It is as to inoculate the intellectual group experience of the lived instant.

It is an instant of great craziness that allows you to conquer the world, stretching out a hand towards what is denied.

It is the recapture of a dream, always dreamt, always longed, and always identified with the pleasant spot such as the Neapolitan Eden.

It is the lightning, furtive dream of getting rid of the human skin and of gliding away in the indescribable inwardness, before the ineluctable happens. 

Enzo Marino