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GELOSIA
An exhibition by Emilio Fantin, Luigi Negro, Giancarlo Norese, Cesare Pietroiusti, and Luigi Presicce
April 26 to June 8, 2014
KMD – KUNSTHALLE MARCEL DUCHAMP
Cully, Switzerland
Gelosia (Jealousy) was the name of the boat that in 2010, with the help of many friends and the public, the Italian artists pushed along the streets of a village in southern Italy during the first edition of an annual event they called “The Celebration of the Living (who reflect upon death).”
The artists proposed to turn the traditional November 2nd celebration, the “Day of the Dead,” into this new holiday. For the first edition of this feast, on November 2nd, 2010, they invited those who were interested to be part of a pilgrimage, probably the shortest and slowest in the world, that departed from its destination (rather than arriving at it): Lu Cafausu in San Cesario di Lecce.
Lu Cafausu is a mysterious small building, an architectural remnant that the artists have elected as a source of metaphors and narratives. It is “an imaginary place that really exists,” around which the presence of death floats. Any day, the small building might in fact be demolished to accommodate more parking space for cars, or might also fall apart due to its precarious, old architecture. It could also be turned into a frozen, dead monument. Because of this feeling of the presence of death, Lu Cafausu is an ideal place for a new celebration. The Celebration of the Living or, in Italian, “La Festa dei Vivi,” is for those who, in order to give meaning to life, reflect upon death; their own, “first and foremost.”
In an ideal continuation of this journey, which deals with our common destiny, with the death of Courbet nearby “Duchamp’s waterfall,” with the origin of the world, with any erotic feeling that could match death, with coincidences, with the unexpected, with chaos… the artists decided to realize a reproduction of the boat Gelosia that will include a secret, referring to something very personal, jealously kept, owned by them.
