PHOTO:Terre In Movimento

Between August and October 2016, a series of violent tremors hit Marche in Italy, a region which, with its unique geographic, artistic and architectural wealth, has given rise over time to a genuine dispersed museum covering the local area. In these places the earthquake caused, on the one hand, loss and the lacerating presence of ruins and, on the other, the creation of temporary structures of every kind: from provisional refuges for inhabitants and their businesses to temporary deposits, which are largely invisible, created to house over 16,000 art works which lost their original home.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: MAXXI Archive

“Terre in movimento”,  is an artistic commission promoted by the Superintendent’s Office for Archaeology, the Arts and Landscape of Marche in collaboration with MAXXI and the Associazione Demanio Marittimo.Km-278, invited Olivo Barbieri, Paola de Pietri and Petra Noordkamp to present their view of these places. Their research produced three projects characterised by different attitudes, temperaments and language. Olivo Barbieri’s project openly addresses the area’s wounds and traumas, fluctuating between three different and complementary viewpoints; Paola De Pietri investigates the relationship between the places of daily life that were destroyed, the new intimate spaces to be built in the temporary locations and the people who live in them, while Petra Noordkamp’s gaze falls on the signs of the change and the sudden interruption of time, on the persistence of memory and on the traces it leaves. In 2015 Olivo Barbieri had already investigated the area of Marche, exploring from above the long urban conurbation which defines the so-called Adriatic City, a huge area which runs from Vasto to Ravenna. Two years on from that project, Barbieri returns to the now wounded areas of Marche and gives us a multifaceted image, which reveals the lacerations on the ground. His work oscillates between three different and complementary observation points: from above, which reveals on the large scale the extent of the disaster; from ground level, where it still seems possible to identify with the Renaissance perspectives which shaped the look of Italian urban culture, and that close-up to works of art recovered from the rubble and restored to life.  The places are shot one year on from the earthquake. The images by Paola De Pietri were taken in the valleys of Tronto, Chienti and surrounding areas between October 2017 – one year after the earthquake – and May 2018. Her work focusses on new temporary settlements used to build small provisional homes and on the consequent transformation of the space, reference points and private places for the people who lived in those areas and who now find their living space in a different geographic area. De Pietri photographed homes ripped apart by the quake, objects found, registered and catalogued in storage, worksites for the construction of the new provisional homes, imagining them above all as familial and private spaces which have been shattered and not yet rebuilt. The photographs of Petra Noordkamp show the interest of the Dutch author for the void, for the signs of the passage of time and for the persistence of memory. The artist focusses initially on the territory of Arquata del Tronto, exploring the private homes that were destroyed but are still full of objects which hark back to the everyday life which used to take place inside those buildings which are now frozen in time: it is these objects to which the artist decides to pay attention, recording and preserving their memory. Noordkamp then visits the deposits of Ancona and San Severino Marche where hundreds of items – sculptures and paintings – are in safe keeping, saved from devastated churches, portraying them wrapped in archiving paper and bubble wrap. Her filming delicately and respectfully enters these places which are still full of tension and life, albeit suspended in time.

Info: Curators: Pippo Ciorra, Birrozzi and Cristiana Colli, MAXXI (National Museum of 21st Century Arts), Via Guido Reni 4A, Rome, Duration: 11/5-1/9/19, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri & Sun 11:00-19:00, Sat 11:00-22:00, www.maxxi.art