ARMENIA / Embassy of Italy in Yerevan

Yerevan, Armenia / 2018 › 2022

In a long-lasting collaboration with the curator Isabella Indolfi, the Embassy of Italy in Yerevan, Armenia, commissioned by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, has promoted a public art program that puts the Embassy in direct contact and dialog with the Armenian people and culture in the capital city of Yerevan.
Between 2018 and 2020, the Italian artists Bianco-Valente, Franz Cerami, Daniele Spanò, Carlo De Meo and Patrizia Posillipo, have been invited to attend a residency program in Yerevan with the aim to explore the Armenian culture and produce new urban narratives and new possible relations.
Five original public artworks have been conceived and created on site and installed in public spaces. Most of them involved the participation of residents and local organizations.
A crescendo of social engagement and exchanges has allowed the Embassy to break the institutional and bureaucratic bubble and to get in touch with the real life of the city.

As a first step, the Embassy symbolically pushed down the architectural barriers that keep it separated from the city. In fact, the large scale installation by Carlo De Meo, a large anthropomorphic sculpture, literally straddled the fence of the Embassy. Once outside the institutional perimeter, the action moved to the center of the city, with the monumental videomapping by Daniele Spanò on the Cascade Cafesjian Center for the Arts. The artistic exploration then led to the suburbs of Yerevan, into abandoned industrial sites and underdeveloped areas where Franz Cerami video-projected his digital painting Lighting Flowers. The next step was the direct engagement with the people and the local communities. This was the aim of Ogni Dove / ԱՄԵՆՈՒՐԵՔ (everywhere) by Bianco-Valente, an intense project exploring the concept of diaspora that required the participation of Armenian communities around the world. Along the same perspective, a photographic project by Patrizia Posillipo portrays the people and places that testify to the intertwined cultures of Italy and Armenia.