The Art High School of Naples constitutes, with the connected Theatine church, the seventeenth-century "Monumental Complex of the Holy Apostles".
Harmonically located in the historical centre, in the characteristic maze of cardi and decumani that indicate the "castrum" urban layout of the Roman city, the building, designed by Francesco Grimaldi in 1610 and completed in 1649, was then consecrated to the Theatine Fathers.
In 1809 the convent was suppressed by Gioacchino Murat and converted first into the Notary Chamber, and then used as a barracks and assigned to the "Real Napoli" regiment. In 1820 it was abandoned and looted before being converted into a tobacco factory in 1869.
Finally, in 1976 the building, under cultural heritage surveillance, was assigned to the Art School of Naples.
Of particular interest, in addition to the architecture, are the underground areas where portions of the Bolla aqueduct are visible, as well as the historic library which has long preserved the manuscript "Gerusalemme Liberata" by Torquato Tasso.
Offsite - the Artwork and the community's interaction.
Monumenti
by Liu Jianhua
Papier-mâché statues stand on Vietri ceramic pedestals. Here they stand, the ‘Monumenti’ by Liu Jianhua, looking down and make the visitors reflect on the theme of the other and of acceptance.
When the artist arrived in Naples to visit Fondazione Made in Cloister, he came across with the varied, popular and multi-ethnic reality of the Porta Capuana district and with ancient craft traditions.
The result of exploration of the district's social reality and the encounter with the artisans was the site-specific work Monumenti. Three-dimensional portraits of people who have left their homeland, whom the artist met and interviewed during his residency in Naples, collecting different stories of migration.
For the biennial exhibition Interaction Napoli, the statues were again a symbol of encounter and integration. Housed in the spaces of the Liceo, they were the subject of research and design for the students, who created the anamorphic installation ‘DIVERSE-THINK’. A work that requires the intervention of the observer to be understood, which takes up the theme of diversity and interaction to send a social message: it is necessary to abandon one's own point of view and change perspective to read the universality of the message.
The project, strongly desired by the school head teacher Prof. Simona Sessa, saw great participation by the students, who, supervised and coordinated by their professors, were very successful in interpreting the values of the work on display.
Offsite - the Artist.
The creative process
by Liu Jianhua
Liu Jianhua is the Chinese artist who, more than any other, has transferred the expressive possibilities of the porcelain as an art material into contemporary language, although he uses very different media and techniques in his research.
Using porcelain with an emphasis on form, without renouncing a philosophical narrative, has allowed him to explore the possibilities of an art linked to his own cultural roots, but at the same time capable of expressing the spiritual instances of contemporaneity.
Offsite: the Craftman.
Ceramica Francesco De Maio - Ceramists of Vietri
Carlo Nappi - Papier-mâché of Nola
Where the sky merges with the sea and the Amalfi Coast shimmers with its thousand colors, there is Francesco De Maio Ceramics of Vietri, which has been making and promoting the beauty of its handmade majolica since 1963, telling, through the excellence of its collections, the culture and history of its homeland.
Six centuries of experience and ceramic excellence have passed since 1494, handed down from generation to generation by the De Maio-Cassetta family, which continue to this day in the Francesco De Maio Ceramics factories, to promote Vietri culture, tradition and art
The history of cartapesta has been known in Italy since the 1500s when it was initially used by artists as a prototype for sculptures and later, in some cases, replaced materials such as wood and marble in the creation of decorative accessories.
The history of papier-mâché in Nola is inextricably linked with that of the Festa dei Gigli, dedicated to the patron saint San Paolino, and which carries in procession 8 wooden pyramidal towers reaching up to 25 metres in height, decorated by local craftsmen with papier-mâché.
This was the context in which Carlo Nappi grew up and, from a young age, worked with the great master craftsmen, learning their techniques and developing them until he founded his own bottega.