STILLS OF PEACE

Stills of Peace and Everyday Life – Edition IV

After Pakistan, Spain and France, this year we propose a confrontation with China, with a focus on some essential humanistic aspects of a dialogue that is in many ways perhaps impossible to achieve with completeness.

Today in Europe there is great interest in this immense country and its thousand-year-old culture, and there are many institutions and authoritative initiatives that propose a mutual knowledge: our event fits among others, with its specificities and peculiarities, making its own contribution to this fundamental meeting.

Stills of Peace proposes again this year the opportunity to “look thinking” trying to combine the pleasure of enjoying the beauty of the places and exhibitions, with the opportunity to know and reflect on something new and different: because it is from these experiences that we can re – learn the awareness of being ourselves, Persons.

Exhibitions:

Scuderie di Palazzo Acquaviva – Atri

Starting from ThisHumanity – Matteo Basilé

Curated by Antonio Zimarino

The works in the exhibition belong to a research begun by the artist between 2010 and 2011, and from time to time resumed, and it’s entitled “Starting from Thishumanity”. It is a series of large-format photographs, depicting people of different cultures and nationalities, united by a condition of evident laceration or suffering, of an interior or exterior type. It is not a documentary search but rather a meditation, a psychological excavation inside the folds of the human soul.

They are portraits of archetypes treated with a carefully constructed light, in a Caravaggesque style, which highlights faces, gestures, clothes and details. Each portrait is transformed into a hypothetical narration of the causes, origins and implications of the suffering it brings with it. They are not specific acts of denunciation, but deep and internalized gazes on the common human condition, a way of confronting any form of pain, to understand both our interiority and that of our fellow men.

Scuderie di Palazzo Acquaviva – Atri

Impromptu – Yahon Chang

Curated by Paolo De Grandis, Maria Rus Bojan, Francise Chang

In this site specific exhibition the Taiwanese artist Yahon Chang presents a series of new works, revealing a philosophical approach to language and music that is deeply connected to his performative practice of ink painting.

In dialogue with the architecture of the exhibition space, Yahon Chang’s presentation is conceived as a visual assemblage structured in three parts, including a monumental site-specific installation of ink drawings on canvas, as well as a display of drawings, black and white paintings and sculptures. Chang’s powerful brushstrokes express essential rhythms and structures that go beyond their apparent meanings; like in music, there is a counterbalance of order and dynamism.

In some works, it seems that the painting brush becomes an extension of the artist’s arm, and his entire body. Despite their formal simplicity, these works are the result of a choreographed movement that expresses a huge personal vitality.

Museo Capitolare – Atri

The Dongba Culture. From the picture-writing of the Naxi people to the contemporary art by Zhang Chun He

Curated by Filippo Lanci, Astrid Narguet and Lucilla Stefoni

The exhibition embraces in a broad overview the multiple dimensions of a unique and fascinating civilization that is likely to disappear. In the first part it is presented the writing of the Dongba of the Naxi through a collection of manuscript papyrus pages. The Dongba writing, which at first glance recalls the pure and pictorial style of Egyptian hieroglyphs, is the last pictorial writing still used in the world, but threatened with extinction. In fact, the Dongba (shamanic priests) are the only ones able to understand and write it, and unfortunately they are less and less.

The second part of the exhibition offers a complete view of the sacred art of Dongba through the tankha collection, manuscript papyrus divinatory pages and wooden slab paintings. The Dongba religion, shamanist and polytheist, based on the cult of ancestors and nature, is based on primitive beliefs blended with Buddhist influence. According to legend, religion was founded by Dongbashilo, a demon hunter. The last part of the exhibition is devoted to contemporary art with the works of Zhang Chun He, one of Naxi’s greatest artists, pioneer of Dongba style painting.

CINEMA:

Chiostro della Cattedrale – Atri

Cine ChINA – Review of Chinese cinema

Movies screened in original version with Italian subtitles
Curated by Pino Bruni