On the occasion of the five hundredth anniversary of the publication of the "Orlando Furioso" by Ludovico Ariosto, Ferrara, the city that hosted the great scholar of the sixteenth century at the court of the Estensi, dedicated a series of initiatives to him. Among these, the important exhibition at Palazzo dei Diamanti, "Orlando Furioso. 500 years. What he saw Ariosto when he closed his eyes ", which opens on September 23rd. In conjunction with this event, the MLB Maria Livia Brunelli home gallery has asked some artists to confront the reading of the poem, to deepen an aspect of it that everyone felt strongly linked to their own poetics.
After Giovanna Ricotta, presented at the same time as the MAMbo of Bologna and the MLB, where her exhibition will end on 18 September, from September 23rd the Brescia artist Stefano Bombardieri will update this kaleidoscopic and surreal poem. Stefano Bombardieri, who in 2009 had enchanted citizens and tourists with the rhinoceros hanging on the Rotonda Foschini of the Teatro Comunale di Ferrara, he was then protagonist of the spectacular urban exhibition of invading art "The Faunal Countdown" in 2010, populating with animals in danger of extinction, life size, the historical center of the Este city: tigers, gorillas, hippos and elephants scattered throughout the city from discover via an exciting urban safari.
Now Bombardieri will surprise the public with a totally new and quite different work: each visitor will have to use a normal app that reads the barcodes to go to the discovery of the countless characters of the various episodes of the "Orlando Furioso" , in a fascinating journey through time that highlights the complex plot of the poem. Enrich the exhibition some small sculptures-jewel inspired by hyperbolic and imaginative phrases of the "Furioso" , that can’t fail to inspire an ironic and at the same time profound artist like Stefano Bombardieri. The exhibition already enjoys the patronage of the National Committee for the celebrations of the V Centenary for the celebrations of the "Orlando Furioso".

On the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of the "Orlando Furioso" by Ludovico Ariosto, concurrent with the important exhibition of Palazzo dei Diamanti, the MLB Maria Livia Brunelli asked some artists to compare themselves with the reading of the poem, to deepen an aspect of it that everyone felt strongly linked to their own poetics. After Giovanna Ricotta and Stefano Bombardieri, the exhibition concludes with Marco Di Giovanni, who created a suggestive and poetic exhibition that does not fail to amaze and excite visitors.
The exhibition project revolves around two fundamental themes: in the first room the warrior women of the poem; in the second the strong fascination exerted by the Moon.
Angelica and Bradamante are the symbol of the new role that the woman assumed in the Renaissance, but at the same time they have to fight with a mentality still very much linked to male privileges: both beautiful, the first is expert in magic and destined as a wife to the most valiant knight, the second is a loving warrior who defeats the most valiant knights.
Di Giovanni frames the figure of Angelica, in his being the object of desire to be awarded as a prize, in that category of women, often beautiful but very unlucky, that the actuality shows us every day by reading the pages of newspapers, those women who propose themselves through ads like "AAA Angelica ". Di Giovanni contacted them starting from those ads, and asked them to pose for a portrait, recalling the tradition of the pictorial nude that in more modest centuries has often seen women used as models. An apparently irreverent operation, that in reality is fully "cortese" in the medieval meaning of the term, because it ennobles the woman until she becomes a woman-angel, giving the impression, says the artist, of "fading elusive and liquid, referring to the fact that one of Angelica's tricks to escape his contenders is to become transparent".
Bradamante instead is really present in the exhibition as a contemporary incarnation of Artemis, goddess of the hunt but also protector of virginity and modesty: throughout the poem defends itself from attacks by petty and violent men for the love of his Ruggero. On show a beautiful girl will fall into the shoes of Bradamante who, for the duration of the inauguration, will overshadow the spectators, struggling in an ideal but thunderous duel of metallic sounds.
In the second room instead the protagonist is the Moon, the celestial body celebrated by the poem as a symbol of the overturn of all that happens on Earth: the only place where there is no madness, which instead dominates the world, because everyone is constantly looking for what they can’t get.
There are no better words than those of Marco Di Giovanni to tell this second part of the exhibition: "The main wall will be dominated by an installation with 46 Moleskine notebooks, one for each song of the poem, all open on the planisphere page divided into time zones; but madness makes us lose every space-time coordinate, as happens in Orlando, wandering the world to the right and to the left, naked, uprooting trees, without distinguishing even the day from the night ".
In this way the artist, with pencil, has added on every planisphere mimetic signs with respect to the print, in order to create an irrational chaos that will confuse borders and continents.

Silvia Camporesi has explored over a year and a half all the Italian regions in research of abandoned countries and buildings. "Atlas Italiae" is the result of this collection of images, an ideal map of Italy that is disappear, an atlas of fading. The artist lets us discover hidden and often unveiled corners, magical places in their peeling marks, they are pervaded by impalpable energies. The photographic series presents itself as a poetic collection of places (uninhabited villages, crumbling architectures, industrial archeology) founded on the search for fragments of memory. This mapping has no intent to report, but ideally incorporates the spirit of the Grand Tour, the search for past sign, still bearers of traces of lives experienced, with which to confront to reflect on the present in order to imagine the future. Once the artists went to discover the Roman ruins, today Silvia Camporesi searches for the contemporary ruins to observe the passing of time.
On the occasion of the MLB exhibition Maria Livia Brunelli, the home gallery in front of the Estense Castle, the artist decided to deepen his exploration of the territory of Ferrara in the footsteps of the fascinating places described by Giorgio Bassani. Bassani is a writer born in Ferrara and from there he became internationally famous thanks to "Il Giardino dei Finzi Contini". A spiritual assonance links the writer to the photographer from Forlì, because the Camporesi develops and continues the exhortation of Bassani to honor and respect the vestiges of the Italian past, which was the basis of his activity in "Italia Nostra", trace that, according to Camporesi, are not limited to the past of the Renaissance but are also those of the most recent history that, observed with greater attention, are not less worthy of respect and full of charm.
In fact, part of the photos that make up the installation exposed to the MLB was taken in Ferrara on the wave of the evocations of the gardens and views described by Bassani in his books. the grandiose installation on the central wall of the gallery are all photographs printed in black and white and then meticulously hand-colored by the artist, to give a conceptual resemblance to places and stories that have lost color, but which Silvia Camporesi has decided to bring back in light and memory.

Two artists who use photography for an analysis Napoli nowadays . Sonia Lenzi recontextualizes the Lari, roman deities that guarded the family, inside the votive shrines of the historic neighborhoods of the city, putting in relation with contemporary sacredness. The past NATO base of Bagnoli, immortalized in its abandonment, becomes for Giovanni Scotti a symbol of a desired urban regeneration. Two realities full of emotion that come from Napoli to Ferrara for the Festival di Internazionale, one of the most significant initiatives of the Italian cultural scene that takes place from September 29th to October 1st, with the intent to recreate an entire number of International live: journalists, writers and protagonists of the cultural world dialogue on issues of great relevance and relevance social, economic and political, arousing the interest and the involvement of a large public.
Sonia Lenzi tells about her work Lares Familiares: “Family relationships are the first to compare and domestic reality is our starting point for the adventure called life. The meaning of our existence is therefore inherent in those relationships and in those places. In the Roman world the Lari were gods who ensured protection and fortune to the family they belonged to and that occupied a place of honor in the heart of the house inside a particular shrines, the lararium. Their cult and lararia have a strong relationship with the difficult reality of today's Napoli and with the votive shrines in the old neighborhoods of the city.
These are devotional altars, cavity built for family members, a sort of little temples with the photograph of the deceased and sacred images, flowers, objects linked to a spontaneous religiosity. There are people who are victims of road accidents, others killed by stray bullets or the Camorra, like Annalisa Durante, used as a human shield during an attack. The chronological and conceptual distance between the two phenomena is canceled by me: the Lares of the Archaeological Museum collections become small three-dimensional photographic objects that I have recreated, that some families of the Quartieri Spagnoli, the Rione Sanità, the Forcella and Mercato insert in the devotional altars, that they have cared for ". The Sonia Lenzi’s Lare has been permanently entrusted to the families or communities they have accepted, to bring good luck, directly from ancient Rome, during a performative delivery action (which took place on 6 July 2017), which was attended by the Directors of the Archaeological Museum of Napoli Paolo Giulerini and the Director of MADRE Andrea Viliani. the performance documented through an unpublished video for the first time presented to the public, together with photographs of some devotional altars, photographic objects and larari created by the artist. The project had the Matronato of the Donnaregina Foundation for Contemporary Arts, in addition to the patronage of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and the City of Naples. Giovanni Scotti instead tells the reality of a large abandoned complex, the ex Nato di Bagnoli, near Napoli. A place mythologized by the artist since childhood. Scotti say: “when I was a child I heard about NATO as an incredible and inaccessible place, but I didn’t know what exactly it was and what was done in there. What I knew was that you could buy cheap peanut butter, marshmallows, Marlboros, TVs, VCRs, cameras and stereos. All American stuff. Inaccessible if you did not know someone inside. Until one evening, during the concert of Edoardo Bennato, the first and last event organized there after the farewell of the Americans, I slipped into the rooms on the upper floors and finally I saw. I saw the light of an era that was fading and another that from the past illuminated my memories, when I imagined that place full of mystery and magic. The lights of the street lamps penetrated the windows like giant yellow moths that rested on my heart, while all around the air still smelled of computers and documents just transferred, of the letterhead with the fourteenth wind star of the JFC- Naples, but also some sweets. Like the box of Cinnamon Hearts in the shape of a heart, still sealed, that slept forgotten in a half-closed locker, next to a CD with the writing "NATO SECRET". The ex Nato di Bagnoli is a place with a burning history: owned by the Banco di Napoli Foundation and originally intended for the reception of destitute children, after the war it was requisitioned by the Americans and from 1954 to 2013 it was the headquarters of the Supreme Command of NATO, the most important in Southern Europe. After the farewell of the troops, the Municipality of Napoli proposed using the complex for socio-cultural purposes, accusing the Foundation of pursuing instead a project to build houses. But it was then the same Municipality to stipulate an agreement in which it renounces the idea of a large area available to the city, encouraging speculation. A story that is unveiled in its raw reality, but with a sensitivity and a poem that elevates the interiors of this immense complex to the authority of a contemporary cathedral. The same suspended and rarefied atmospheres can be found in the series of photographs dedicated to Edenlandia, the first theme park built in Europe in 1965, in the suburbs of Napoli, in total abandonment since 2013. The volume that collects the shots, The City of Disenchantment, recently presented at the MADRE in Naples by Andrea Viliani and Giovanni Chiaramonte, unveils the entire investigation on this surreal place.