Procida: where art frees body and mind

Palazzo d’Avalos was the prison of the island of Procida. Since 1988 it has not been. Today, thanks to the island’s investiture as the Italian Capital of Culture 2022, five cells of that prison overlooking the village of Terra Murata have become art rooms for an exhibition with the evocative name, Sprigionarti. Six artists are involved, all high-profile: Maria Thereza Alves (São Paulo, 1961), Jan Fabre (Antwerp, 1958), William Kentridge (Johannesburg, 1955), Alfredo Pirri, Francesco Arena (Torre Santa Susanna, 1978) and Andrea Anastasio (Rome, 1961). Curated by Agostino Riitano in collaboration with Vincenzo de Bellis and under the patronage of the Donnaregina Foundation for Contemporary Arts 2022, the exhibition opened on May 27 and ending Dec. 31, 2022. “We asked five major artists to imagine a relational perspective with the former penal colony, a symbolic place, and testimony to the social, political, and urban history of the island, to investigate new resonances of meaning between the historical dimension of imprisonment and isolation and the modern vocation of openness and sharing,” Riitano himself explains. “The idea behind the project is that a museum in the 21st century should be for everyone, capable of offering a personal experience of cultural growth, shared collectively as an essential identity value, open to cultural diversity, strongly rooted in the territory and, at the same time, oriented toward the national and international context,” the Procida 2022 director continues. “Significantly, this is being done in a former prison. A place of imprisonment and isolation will thus be transformed into a place of physical and mental openness through contemporary art. The desire is to constitute a dynamic laboratory aimed at cultural production and open to direct participation while maintaining its institutional function of research, production, conservation, and exhibition, capable of enhancing, and contextually strengthening its public mission, in a dialogic relationship with society and the dynamics of contemporary culture.” An approach indicative of the desire to regenerate and return to the island’s inhabitants, this imposing building that before became a prison was a Bourbon royal palace. Before that, it was a stately residence from the Renaissance period built by the d’Avalos family, which ruled Procida until the end of the 18th century. In 2013, the building and 5,000 square meters of the surrounding estate were acquired by the City of Procida, which began work to upgrade and secure it. Nine years later, one of the symbolic places of Arthur Island is coming back to life in the highest way.