Until May 2023, it will be possible to admire one of artist Marinella Senatore‘s famous light sculptures, presented for the first time in the heart of Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, precisely at Galleria Cracco.
A project born with the aim of bringing contemporary art to Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, from an idea of chef Carlo Cracco with the communication agency Paridevitale and curated by the television channel Sky Arte, presents its sixth edition in a new and unexpected configuration.
The initiative features Marinella Senatore, one of Italy’s most internationally renowned multidisciplinary artists, who in recent years has worked with more than 8 million people in 24 countries and presented her works in museums and institutions around the world.
After the site-specific interventions by contemporary Italian artists such as Patrick Tuttofuoco, Masbedo, Goldschmied&Chiari, Giovanni Ozzola and Valerio Berruti, Marinella Senatore – whose practice is characterised by a strong collective and participatory dimension – was invited to imagine a work capable of transcending the exhibition space of the Cracco Restaurant’s window-lunettes, emphasising the public identity of the project with a bold and unprecedented approach.
“Thanks to the meeting with Sky Arte and Paride Vitale, the lunettes of the restaurant were able to find their own vocation, becoming a showcase for contemporary artistic talent,” says chef Carlo Cracco. “Thanks to Marinella Senatore’s research and beautiful work, we have reached a new milestone, bringing the artistic intervention into dialogue with the architectural space of the Gallery, with an invitation to visitors to lift their gaze and let themselves be drawn into the work“.
The installation We rise by lifting others, drawing inspiration from the traditional illuminations of southern Italy, uses the symbolic power of light to be a positive message for and of the community, transforming itself into a manifesto aimed at generating social change through the visual power of art: “We rise by lifting others”.
Starting in 2016, Senatore has been creating large site-specific light installations, such as those presented in New York at the Queens Museum (2017) and at the High Line (2018), in Piazza Duomo in Lecce on the occasion of the 2021 Dior Cruise collection fashion show (2020), in the courtyard of Palazzo Strozzi in Florence (2020), in the cities of Baden Baden, London and at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris in 2022.
Senatore’s light sculptures are catalysts of energy aimed at celebrating individuals and communities: thanks to empowerment phrases, drawn from her performance practice, and the power of light, a key theme in her research, they turn out to be “ephemeral architectural structures that construct the idea of a universal square and circumscribe special environments in which people celebrate encounter, exchange, community. In fact, they are monuments to people here and now,” as Marinella Senatore describes them.
The project was realised with the collaboration of Mazzoleni, London – Turin.
Photo credit: Conte
