Starting out with the idea that contemporary art can represent a universal language, a common experience articulated according to different sensibilities and cultures, the exhibition’s curator has called upon one of the most renowned Arab artists on the international contemporary art scene, Moataz Nasr, to delve into the territory of Pisa and share his insights creatively. “I invited Moataz Nasr explains Ilaria Mariotti to interact with two different urban realities, Pisa and Santa Croce sull’Arno, and two different ways of experiencing the relations between people and cultures. The world of Islam has had a long, historical and monumental presence in Pisa. Numerous marvellous artworks from past times remain as testament to the movement of people, ideas, and complex social and cultural systems (the Cathedral and its decorations, the ceramic basins adorning many of the city’s churches), and are zealously conserved today as part of Pisa’s cultural heritage. In Santa Croce sull’Arno, the complex relationships between different peoples from far-flung parts of the world are testified to by an intricate social reality (immigrants account for about 21% of its inhabitants), something that is immediately apparent by simply walking along its streets. Moataz Nasr weaves a personal dimension into his work. He captures individual human frailties and uses them to address global issues. In regarding both the traditional and the industrial systems of production he finds the chance to reflect on the dynamics of a complex present. So I resolved to invite him to an encounter with a territory that he didn't know and which revealed an amazing cultural dimension”.

It became immediately evident that the project for the exhibition, which seeks to express the encounter between this international artist and a territory made up of people, knowledge, and an urban fabric with an industrial tradition, represented a prime opportunity for creating connections, first and foremost between the two cities of Pisa and Santa Croce sull’Arno. According to Dario Danti, head counsellor for the Pisa cultural affairs committee: “It is fundamental to create bridges between cities and countries in the dialogue and ‘contamination’ between different cultures. Today, this ‘liquid sea’ that Europe has become can be experienced by travelling routes that are not necessarily commonplace ones. This is one of the challenges that I have taken on, and for which this project represents a significant step forward”.
“As head counsellor for the Santa Croce cultural affairs committee, says Mariangela Bucci, following the planning and realization of this project has meant working concretely on the level of networks, valorising the different potentials of the two realities. The exhibition will promote greater awareness on the part of citizens of a nearby reality that, although certainly known to them, is perhaps not really ‘seen’. This project invites us all not only to look at, but also to see the reality that surrounds us”. And Mario Cristiani, President of the Associazione Arte Continua and founder of Galleria Continua San Gimignano / Beijing / Le Moulin: “What I hope for from this project, which is closely linked to our association’s initiatives in recent years, is that it can give rise to a virtuous alliance between the international art community and the local one, between international artists, university research centres, high-quality crafts, and technologically advanced industry, so that Tuscany can offer a new model for exchange between beauty and human capacity. We hope that this encounter between art, science and technology brings forth from Tuscany a message to the world of beauty, dignity and respect”.

As firsthand witness to the complex cultural processes that the Islamic world is undergoing, Nasr uses his geographical affiliation as a pretext to transcend political and religious boundaries, to project himself toward an interchange between cultures and histories. The work highlights some salient features of the Egyptian artist’s creative research: multiculturalism and the tendency to consider culture a fluid element that is renewed and transformed in relation to encounters with ‘otherness’; and attention to the present, conceived of as the effect of historical stratification. His pursuit of two lines of artistic enquiry, whereby the subjective, autobiographic aspect is combined with an account of a collective condition that has been shaped by both history and context and is hence detectable anthropologically.

The works that Moataz Nasr has conceived of expressly for the Centro Espositivo SMS San Michele degli Scalzi in Pisa and Villa Pacchiani in Santa Croce sull’Arno are the fruit of nine months of interactions, fact-finding visits and encounters between the artist and the territory that is hosting him.

In medieval times Pisa was one of Italy’s four Maritime Republics, whence the many testaments of people and artefacts from the world of Islam. “What I loved about Pisa as I visited the Cathedral, the Baptistery, the Monumental Cemetery and the Tower declares the artist was that mixture of two different cultures, which is manifest in ways and forms that appear simple, easy. Western architecture fuses with the language of Islamic art. Inside the Baptistery I found marvellous sculptures: columns, colours, decorations and flooring that speak of this union. There is nothing troublesome or forced in this union; there is no ‘us and you’. Then, speaking of the famous bronze Islamic sculpture originally located atop the Pisa Cathedral and nowadays held in the Cathedral Works Museum, he continues “the griffin could have been made anywhere, brought here from anywhere, but the aspect that struck me most was the fact of its having been placed on top of the Cathedral in a general context that speaks of a meeting of peoples and cultures”. The mythological beast, an amalgamation of so many different creatures, each of which brings with it its characteristic power, astuteness and courage, the griffin a mythological creature analogous to the phoenix, which rises from the ashes of its funeral pyre unites in a single entity the astrological signs of earth, water, air and fire. The bronze sculpture of the griffin bears Kufic character inscriptions auguring good fortunes, wishes that the make the sculpture an exceptional, auspicious gift. In his exhibit The journey of a Griffin, Moataz Nasr transports the griffin virtually to Villa Pacchiani in Santa Croce, where he has recreated the mythological creature from leather to produce the work “The return of a Griffin”. “Leather explains the curator is a material that represents the very heart and soul of Santa Croce sull’Arno. Leatherwork is historically part and parcel of this city and its surroundings, which have made creativity and handcraft skills a distinctive feature of the brand ‘Made in Italy’ exported the world over. The leather industry here employs many immigrants who have come to Santa Croce over the years and now form a sizeable community made up of people from many different areas of the world, living together in the city, at times not without difficulties, practising different religions and expressing social imaginaries of wholly different origins. In this exhibition, Moataz Nasr’s sculpture becomes a central element full of meaning, which forms the nucleus for a whole series of reflections on the multiethnic nature of the community of Santa Croce. It represents a link (through transfer of the symbolic object) between a monumental place of worship and an object existing in a complex, diversified contemporary society”. The exhibition at Villa Pacchiani is completed by documents and photographs testifying to the long process of the work’s creation, and which seek to reveal the iconographic and historical complexity of the griffin. In The Journey of a Griffin, the artwork of past times becomes the point of departure and stimulus for revealing various approaches to understanding the object itself, which when reflected upon yields different responses to different queries, suggesting different levels on which to comprehend it: personal experience, iconographic interpretation, the symbolic dimension, the physical journey of the object, the artist’s journey in reproducing it in leather, and scientific study and analysis.

The project that Moataz Nasr has conceived of for the Pisa Centro Espositivo SMS San Michele degli Scalzi, entitled Harmonia, takes inspiration from the production activities of the Pisan area, which the artist identifies with the Vespa, the Piaggio scooter patented in 1946, which is considered one of the world’s foremost examples of industrial design. Often used as a symbol of Italian design, for Nasr it becomes the vehicle (in the figurative sense) for a regional and national identity. Vacanze Romane, the pivotal work that the artist has realized for the Pisa exhibition, is composed of eight Vespas lined up one after the other to form an octagon, the rear wheel of each acting as the front wheel of the next. The work, carried out with the support of the Piaggio Foundation, has been supervised by the artist in direct collaboration with the technical management of Piaggio and the Argol Villanova Group. The number eight represents one of the world’s most ancient symbols: it is the number of cardinal directions on the wind-compass, as well as on the Tower of the Winds in Athens; it is the number of petals in a lotus blossom and therefore represents the paths of The Way in Buddhist creed. The figure eight moreover symbolises cosmic equilibrium: in ancient pagan religions (and even today) it stands for infinity and is a magic number in nuclear physics. The octagon is a recurring geometric figure in many of Moataz Nasr’s works and a symbolic element that he has also discovered recurring time and again in the architecture of the Tuscan city: in the baptismal font of the Baptistery, on the exquisite marble pulpit sculpted by Giovanni Pisano, and many of the Islamic decorations held in Pisa’s Cathedral Works Museum. With Vacanze Romane, Moataz Nasr transports the octagon into our daily lives. He does so by arranging this installation in a closed form (the cyclicity of life), using an every-day object that serves the purpose of travelling about (life is made up of energy). The title, in particular, refers to the famous 1953 film that made the Vespa famous. Who doesn’t remember the vitality, the beauty, and the carefree joy of that “Roman Holiday” in the saddle of this iconic vehicle? Vacanze Romane is surrounded by other works by the artist video installations, photographs, sculptures forming a considerable body of never-before-seen works for the Italian public. The main theme remains that of personal identity, of a people and an historical moment in continuous oscillation between the dimensions of the personal and the collective, in its most global sense.

Villa Pacchiani Centro Espositivo
Piazza Pier Paolo Pasolini
Santa Croce sull’Arno (PI) 56029 Italy
Ph. +39 0571 30642
assessore.cultura@comune.santacroce.pi.it
www.villapacchiani.wordpress.com

Opening hours
Friday - Sunday from 4pm to 8pm

Centro Espositivo per le Arti Contemporanee SMS
Viale delle Piagge
Pisa 56121 Italy
Ph. +39 050 9919845
www.comune.pisa.it

Opening hours
Tuesday - Friday from 4pm to 7pm
Saturday - Sunday from 11am to 7pm

Related images

  1. The Other Side of the Mirror exposition , 2011, view of the show at Galleria Continua / San Gimignano
  2. The Other Side of the Mirror exposition , 2011, view of the show at Galleria Continua / San Gimignano
  3. The Other Side of the Mirror exposition , 2011, view of the show at Galleria Continua / San Gimignano
  4. Khayameya, 2012, matches on wood, Plexiglas, 100 x 100 cm
  5. Fiat Nasr, 2006, series of 6 C-prints on aluminium, 60 x 60 x 60 cm each, detail
  6. Khayameya, 2012, matches on wood, Plexiglas, 100 x 100 cm