From June 10 to September 10, 2021 MANN – National Archaeological Museum of Naples hosts “P.P.P. Possible Public Policy”, a solo exhibition by Sasha Vinci (1980): a project that takes the form of a lyrical denunciation of the critical issues, injustices and inconsistencies of contemporary Italian society, made even more evident by the global pandemic.

The exhibition, realized in collaboration and with the support of the aA29 Art Project gallery, includes works created over the last year, in the midst of the health emergency with its lockdowns, and site-specific works conceived in dialogue with the spaces and works of the MANN collection, including “Canta Napoli”, a work that reproduces the Neapolitan soundscape, and “Non Tocca Terra la Parola”, an installation whose dominant element is the feather, a metaphor for lightness and overcoming gravity, but also a symbolic device that constructs a new ritual meaning for the present and that harmoniously embraces the marble of “Il supplizio di Dirce” (Toro Farnese), a famous Hellenistic sculptural group, part of the museum collection. The exhibition space is also occupied by regular and irregular polyhedrons, which imitate the harmonious forms of nature, while revealing, through the language of drawing, the chaotic and multiform aspect of reality, in its nuances and contradictions.

On each side a different image develops, with a solution of continuity between them: suspended figures, timeless frames, which mix news and film scenes, emblematic gestures and signs, up to still images of the artist’s personal life.

The polyhedrons are a synthesis of the complexity of the present and from a formal and aesthetic point of view represent an attempt to bring drawing back to the third dimension.

“Sasha Vinci’s exhibition, conceived specifically for the MANN, one of the major European archaeological museums, guardian of the identity of the Italian culture, begins with a Pasolinian phrase, which is intended to be a civic exhortation to the redemption of contemporary Italy – underlines the curator Maurizio Bortolotti. With this exhibition, displayed in the Rooms of the Farnese Collection, the artist builds a dialogue between the monumental attitude of classical sculpture and the performative fluidity of his works. His attention to the context of the soundscape of Naples references the lives of the people inside the city and is a critique of Italian immobility.”

At the MANN Sasha Vinci experiments with different expressive languages, from drawing to sculpture, from installation to performance, from photography to sound art, giving rise to a total work of art, in which the museum becomes a landscape to be explored and crossed.

With “P.P.P. Possible Public Policy” the artist rethinks the relationships between Nature, Man and Society, and reflects on the need for a new ethical, aesthetic and political consciousness, whose ideal reference is Pier Paolo Pasolini (P.P.P.), an explicit reference to a season of social and political commitment and free experimentation.

“We live as outcasts on the traces of our own history, in a contemporary Italy of conformism, hedonism, political immaturity – explains Sasha Vinci. Possible Public Policy is the cry of the poet in a deformed present, which with imaginative force tries to find authenticity. At the beginning of my journey, the sculptures of the MANN were focal points for my research, today I dialogue with history: I have created works that live in tune with the space that welcomes them, that embrace the past and trigger questions to shape together a fair and multi-natural future.”

In this age of uncertainty and hesitation, “P.P.P. Possible Public Policy” is a project that recovers the power of art as a vision, capable of creating links between past and present, between mythological tale and civil action, in which ancient symbologies are repeated, in a search for meanings for today. An act of denunciation against immobilism and social inertia, since the rules and rhythms of the world must change radically if we want to start telling the truth.

Sasha Vinci (1980) lives in Scicli, Sicily. The foundation of his research is the continuous experimentation of different artistic languages. Performance, sculpture, drawing, painting, writing, music are expressions that the artist uses to create works from which emerges a free thought that questions the problems of the existing, to reach a broad and plural vision. Graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence (2005), from 2012 to 2018 Vinci collaborates with Maria Grazia Galesi creating the duo Vinci/Galesi, with whom he creates Trilogia del possibile, a public and social art project. In 2008 he founds SITE SPECIFIC (www.sitespecific.it), an independent reality managed by the non-profit Cultural Association PASS/O, a project that transforms the city of Scicli in a Live Theater, where contemporary creativity can live and exist. In 2017 he won the Sustainable Art Prize, called by Ca’ Foscari University Venice, in collaboration with ArtVerona. In 2019 Sasha Vinci was selected to participate in the third edition of GRAND TOUR D’ITALIE, a project conceived by the Direzione Generale Creatività Contemporanea – MiC. In 2020 he won the competition Contemporary Creation & Green Museum – Wooden Renaissance, a site-specific growth called by the Reggia di Caserta in collaboration with MiC, to create a site-specific work inside the Royal Park of the Reggia. The artist’s works have also been presented and exhibited in museums, non-profit spaces, biennials, art exhibitions, universities and theaters in Italy and abroad: Reggia di Caserta; MACRO – Rome; Manifesta12 – Palermo; Villa D’Este – Tivoli; FuturDome – Milan; Centro Culturale La Mercè, Girona-Barcelona; Ca’ Foscari University – Venice; NYU School of Engineering – New York; Art Centre of Silpakorn University – Bangkok; Teatro La Fenice – Venice.

Maurizio Bortolotti is an art critic and curator currently living in Milan. He was “Director of Research and Public Program” at the Himalayas Museum in Shanghai (2015-16). In this position he worked on the organization of the new Biennale project called “Shanghai Project” and the reorganization of the museum. He was the first Italian curator to work in a Chinese museum. From May 2019 to December 2020 he was a member of the Board of Directors of Gallerie Estensi. He has worked as an independent curator in Italy and other countries, focusing his attention on the interaction between art and social processes in the context of globalization. He has dealt in particular with the relationship between art and architecture in relation to the organization of social relations within the urban space. Since the early 2000s he has directed his attention towards art in Asia and has worked in South Korea, India and China. He has curated, among others, projects and exhibitions by Yona Friedman, Peter Eisenman, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Dan Graham, Tomas Saraceno, Olafur Eliasson, Ai Weiwei. He is currently curator of the 6th edition of the Mongolia Biennial, LAM360.

Press Office: Lara Facco P&C