From New York to the village of the Sicani: artists from around the world "weave" the future of Sant’Angelo Muxaro

What is happening in Sant'Angelo Muxaro, the small village perched on Monte Castello famous for the remains of the ancient and mythical Sican city of Camico?

For weeks, the center has become a destination for numerous international artists who are taking turns working on the creation of a artistic-naturalistic park of contemporary art, as part of the project “Crossing the Boundaries of Landscape – Sikani Land Art” conceived by Farm Cultural Park of Favara in collaboration with the Municipality of Sant'Angelo Muxaro.

The initiative includes Art Residencies for eight women, invited to explore the relationship between art, landscape, and community, with the aim of creating a “collective journey” through listening practices, redefining the relationship with the territory to transform Sant'Angelo into an open-air museum and enhance the history and local traditions through a female perspective.

Some of these women artists were met at the bar in the square of Sant'Angelo during a work break. They are Adriana Alvarez, a researcher at the University of Denver in Colorado (USA), and Mabel Weber and Monica Lozano, visual artists, both Mexican from El Paso of the female collective “What Remains”. They are the ones who, with their “Trenza”, a large braid-installation that grows through the gifts of the people, are collecting common-use objects donated by the population in Sant'Angelo, which will be added to a long braid made up of myriad objects from this world, starting with those lost in the border desert of Chihuahua, at Ciudad Juarez, between Mexico and the United States, by those who attempted to cross the border and go beyond the “wall”.

Also arriving in Sant'Angelo is Kornelia Konrads, a German from Hannover, an artist who creates imposing Land Art installations in public spaces around the world. In fact, the first to arrive in the village of the Sikani to kick off the series of female presences was the artist born in the Niger Delta, Zina Saro Wiva, who lives in Brooklyn and is a video artist and director known for creating video installations and who investigates the cultural dimensions of the territory in her interdisciplinary practice. Then it was the turn of Loredana Longo, a Milanese artist who summarizes her work as “aesthetics of destruction” (for rebirth) and who produced her “Explosion” at the foot of the mountain in Sant'Angelo.

Artists arriving and others departing after the hospitality and experience gained in the Valley of Platani. The appointment for contemporary art enthusiasts is set for Sunday, March 22 at 11 AM in Sant'Angelo Square, where the artists have invited the community to bring something personal, an object, a memory, a symbol, but also something to eat and share because that day they will create a social lunch.

“Because the work of these artists” – explains notary Andrea Bartoli, creator of Farm Cultural Park – “is not just a work of art but a collective story that is built together. In a time of barbarism – he says – let’s build a “braid” to stay human!”