REBIRTH
The program
Fondazione Made in Cloister, based in Naples in the Porta Capuana area, a historic gateway to the city and the first stop for newcomers, in collaboration with nonlineare - independent curatorial initiative, launches a two-year programme entitled REBIRTH. The program stems from the encounter between Made in Cloister's commitment to urban regeneration through art and the mission of nonlineare - independent curatorial initiative, designed to resist the fracturing of the world by reaffirming a cooperative mentality and nurturing original thinking and creativity across disciplinary, epistemic and geostrategic divides. Its main activities are oriented towards artistic practice for social purposes and para-academic learning.
The aim is to help address the cascading crises of our time - ecological collapse, social fragmentation and cultural amnesia - through a prismatic perspective of exhibitions, residencies and intensive research sessions.
For the first year, the programme confronts the complex idea of rebirth in the face of imminent and past catastrophes. It questions whether rebirth is a real possibility or just an emotional investment in hope. The works in the exhibition will examine the idea of reincarnation, the diffusion of boundaries between life forms and the crossing of species and categories. The project will confront ancient philosophical paradoxes, such as Theseus' Ship, examining the tension between identity and otherness, variation and repetition, continuity and rupture. It will invite the audience to consider how rebirth can embrace death rather than avoid it, questioning the implications of the quest for immortality. The programme will also explore the concept of agency in rebirth, asking whether nature itself possesses intentionality in its constant reproduction and reinvention, letting go of fixed parameters and making room for the contingent and the ineffable.
The first stage of the REBIRTH program is a group exhibition that aims to explore the idea of rebirth through the lens of regeneration and restoration, inspired by the history of the 16th-century cloister of the Church of Santa Caterina a Formiello, a jewel of the Neapolitan Renaissance. The transformation of the cloister into an exhibition and performance space, open to the city, was the starting point for the Made in Cloister project
The REBIRTH program is developed through two exhibitions per year, and other related in-depth activities, to encourage the broadest exploration of the concept of rebirth and renewal.
Residencies
Artist residencies are another key part of the program. Each year the Foundation invites artists in residence to allow them to interact with the local community and, with their support, create works for the Foundation's space. This approach allows for a thoughtful immersion in the local context, creating a complex web of meanings linking place, environment, architecture, history and community. The residencies will be open to both emerging and established artists to allow for a diverse range of perspectives and practices.
Symposia
The cornerstone of the programme is the annual three-day research intensive. This component is designed to provide a comprehensive approach to navigating the vast fields of contemporary humanistic and scientific knowledge. The aim is to solicit new ways of looking at known phenomena and to chart viable future scenarios, grounded in the present, by bringing together leading philosophers, artists, scientists, theatre directors, architects and theorists.
Community
Interaction with the community is at the heart of the Foundation's activities. The themes of artistic production, through the Foundation's activities, become workshops for discussion and sustainable growth of the community: live events, reading sessions and in-depth meetings on topics of collective interest.