A proposal for the "Casa della Memoria" of Amatrice - Riscarti Festival 2017
Iron, bricks
50x73x54 cm
This is a model of my proposal for the “Casa della Memoria” of Amatrice.
I was invited there to work on a project for this terribly devastated land after last year’s earthquake.
I could only use materials taken from rubble to make a sculpture that should go in the “casa della memoria” when it will be built in 2018. My first idea was too hard and too expensive to make, so I chose to think about the building itself, and this is my proposal for "La Casa della Memoria" of Amatrice done in a scale of 1:10.
What I saw walking through the streets of Amatrice was really horrible, and very hard to describe. Houses, one after the other, screaming their non-presence. Deserted streets where buildings are just piles of rubble. Houses were there, even if they weren’t, with a much stronger presence than they would have if intact. Ghosts, scary as ghosts are. Intense as ghosts. Terrifying as ghosts.
I felt the enormous and unstoppable power of nature. The lost capacity of human kind to build a relationship with that who gives it life.
I felt the power of pain, suffering, the devastation of people's lives, the tragedy of all the deaths, and the despair of those who remained alive and lost everything, home, family and friends.
I thought about the kids who survived, and imagined how me as a kid could have lived something so devastating, in which way I would have represented it at a very young age.
This model is a house, as I might have drawn it as a kid after living such an experience. Wavering lines to define a ghostly volume, whose doors and windows are the only reminiscence of elements that define "home", and they are made of rubble. It is the negative of a house, where all the openings towards the outside are walls instead, and walls are not there any more.
If it will ever be built in the right scale, I would like it to be built with reinforcing steel and real walls taken from what remains of the houses of Amatrice.
