Following Radicate, the Artist Residencies of the project “Sulle Spalle dei Giganti” (On the Shoulders of Giants) continue in the Campo, where Xylella has redesigned the boundaries of the visible through subtraction. This second Residency understood “shadow” not as a biological void, but as a generative space: a zone of rest and care necessary to navigate environmental trauma and transform it into awareness.

Here, shadow becomes both archetype and refuge, finding a powerful echo in the Butoh dance of Alberto Cacopardi (Tessuto Corporeo). During the public restitution on July 22nd, his performance investigated the body as a bridge between the wounded earth and the necessity of rebirth.

From a public open call launched in recent months, out of over twenty submissions, two projects were selected and implemented for Ombra: those of Giulia Barone (Rome, 1994) and the duo Graziana Di Santo (Andria, 1993) – Fabrizio Bellomo (Bari, 1982), with the collaboration of art critic and historian Carmelo Cipriani.

Giulia Barone: Cyanotype as Collective Memory

The work of Giulia Barone operates as a transposition of local identity through the photographic process of cyanotype. The artist does not merely portray; she “extracts” the essence of the Villaggio Boncore community. Through a single composite portrait that intertwines the faces of farmers, breeders, and residents, Barone creates a work where authorship fades into a gesture of restitution.

The technique, which harnesses sunlight to fix the blue pigment, becomes a metaphor for a memory that resists time. The installation offers an intimate space for reflection, shaped by items donated by the community (a linen sheet and an antique bed) – a “collective body” that welcomes the visitor into silent listening, transforming individual experience into a shared archive of memory.

Bellomo and Di Santo: The Anthropic Object and the Broken Icon

The proposal by Fabrizio Bellomo and Graziana Di Santo moves on a sculptural and critical plane. The two artists chose to confront absence: the physical lack of shadow in a landscape desertified by Xylella.

Using discarded materials collected from the community itself, the duo operated a plastic stratification around an olive trunk—a broken icon of Mediterranean culture. The work does not attempt a vain repair of natural damage; instead, it exposes the trauma through the grafting of anthropic fragments. The result is an object that interrogates our time—an act of awareness that navigates loss without hiding it beneath superficial aesthetics. It is a gesture that transforms waste into critical thought, forcing the observer to recognize their own responsibility within the altered landscape.

Watch the video story of the Residency featuring interviews with the artists.

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