MAKE THIS EARTH HOME

2020

 A solo show by Maria D. Rapicavoli including a series of newly commissioned works and site specific installations in Otranto, Italy

Organized by cijaru and Comune di Otranto, curated by Francesco Scasciamacchia; scientific research by Davide De Notarpietro

In the installation created for Torre Matta, the artist, Maria D. Rapicavoli invites us to immerse ourselves in a historical and imaginary journey through the traces of the material culture of the Neolithic, Greek-Messapic and Roman period of Otranto, a multicultural landing site of the other and the elsewhere. The exhibition highlights how the town - the “Gateway to the East” - and in general this part of south-east Salento were a meeting place for cultures coming from the other side of the Adriatic, such as the ancient Greek, Albanian, Turkish and Montenegrin cultures. 

 In the upper floor of the tower, in the space of the shooting lines, the artist revisits the prehistory in Otranto with two works: Giorno del sole (2020) in which a luminous circle projected from a light source, placed on the ceiling, reproduces the ray of sunlight that penetrates through the upper hole of the dolmen – a megalithic monument used as sepulchral chamber or altar – on the day of the summer solstice. The other work is Nessi ancestrali (2020) in which a papier-mâché composition is illuminated creating shadows that reproduce the pictograms of the Grotta dei Cervi in Porto Badisco – a seaside town south of Otranto – considered the “Sistine Chapel” of the Neolithic Age. In the cave realistic representations of deer and archers appear and symbolic-abstract with stelliforms, comb-like, harpsichord, spiral-like forms, codes, social and religious symbols of an international language. 

 The space of the lower section of the tower, through specific lighting, takes on a green-blue hue which recalls the Adriatic Sea that bathes Otranto. The sea water light immerses us in an underwater experiential dimension in which the sea becomes an absolute metaphor for commercial, cultural and know-how exchanges between Otranto and the Eastern lands.  The polygonal room becomes an exhibition space where the artist arranges her installations such as I due mari (2020): a multifaceted composition of terracotta pots which represent Salento material culture from the Archaic, to the Hellenistic and the Late-Antiquity periods. The Eastern influence on the local ancient potters, speaks in the specific form and function of the ancient and current pride of Salento’s “figuli”.  The multicoloured blue-green content Otranto’s marine water refers to the sea as a place of union for commercial and cultural exchanges. 

 In the other corner of the space, a pile of bauxite Fuoco (2020), leads us to the physical location of the Bauxite quarry in the nearby “Baia dell’Orte”, situated to the south of the town. The red material, already traded by the Aegean population of the Mycenaen and used for making metals and as a mortar for construction, recalls the endogenous raw materials such as Tyrian purple, which was obtained by shells, and exogenous like cinnabar. Tyrian purple and cinnabar, for instance, are evidence of Otranto’s contacts with Central and Northern Italy’s mines, Transadriatic regions and numerous places in the Mediterranean. 

A shell, Il suono dell’aria (2020), recreated by the artist and based on the Neolithic marine element found in the Grotta dei Cervi, recalls a wind instrument. Its ancestral sound, reproduced in the exhibition space, was to accompany initiation rites, prayers, processions or dances inside and outside of the cave during ancient times. 

In the little square outside the tower, at the end of the exhibition tour, next to the town’s ditches, it is visible the installation Make This Earth Home,(2020) in flex neon led writing from which the exhibition takes its name. The sentence is an aspiration and a desire to re-establish the harmony and the sense of togetherness that the populations and the diverse cultures, generated right here in this land between two seas thanks to the circulation of shared models and symbols, can once again  ‘embrace’ under the aegis of the great Mother Earth.

The commemoration of the ancestral history of Salento can be found in the city public space such as Lungomare Kennedy and Lungomare degli Eroi. These public installations en plein air and conceived as seats depict three different motifs of the Neolithic pintaderas – terracotta stamps used for different purposes - such as a spiral, an “S” and a zig-zag, belong to a ritual alphabet used in the transmission of complex ideas and thoughts and are common to all of the prehistoric Mediterranean sites such as Grotta dei Cervi located in Otranto. The works, Terra#1; Terra#2; Terra#3 (2020), made from local Pietra Leccese are material amplification of these historical symbols that interacts with its relational dimension inviting the observer to scan the nearby lands beyond-the-sea.  Text by Francesco Scasciamacchia