Meet the artists - Introduction to Nicola and Sara

For a long time, I did not understand the links between the artists and their art. I mean, I knew the artists responsible for their works, but I didn't understand the importance of learning about their lives for a better appreciation of their art!

Once I understood that link, I realized that artists have their own contexts, relationships and personalities that influence the decisions they make when they work on their art. So now when I like a piece of art, I want to learn more about the artist who made it and often I find that it gives me new insights into their art. This changes my appreciation of that art, it makes it deeper and more satisfying.

This post is about two of my my favourite Italian sculptors - Nicola Zamboni and Sara Bolzani. In May 2013, I went to meet them at their home in Sala Bolognese, not very far from Bologna (Italy). I am planning three posts regarding this meeting - this first post is about how I discovered their art. The remaining two posts will be about the discussions with them, where they talk about their art and give a glimpse into their lives.

The Humanity Exhibition

I first discovered the works of Nicola Zamboni and Sara Bolzani at their joint exhibition called "The Humanity" in 2011. This exhibition was held in the inner courtyard of the Accursio Palace in the city centre of Bologna. This is a square-shaped space surrounded by medieval buildings that is commonly used for art exhibitions.

The exhibition was composed of different human-size figures in bronze, with medieval soldiers on horses, scenes of violence, women running away with their children in their arms and their belongings on their heads, horses falling down and persons dying, soldiers raping and abducting women. I was mesmerized by this exhibition and went back to look at it a couple of times.

On one hand, I felt that some of the middle-eastern figures of this exhibition, such as the women covered in black chadors, were stereotypes. On the other hand, the unmistakable vitality of the figures had a strong emotional impact on me.

One of my favourite figures in this exhibition was that of a thoughtful angel waiting near a dying horse and a soldier.

The 12 women of Villa Spada

A few months after the Humanity exhibition, I went to visit the textile museum of Bologna hosted in a 16th century building called Villa Spada. This villa had an Italian garden on a hill - a garden where plants are made to form geometric shapes, which had some medieval sculptures that were damaged. In their place, they had put 12 terracotta statues of women, each woman representing one month of a year.

I fell in love with those statues and felt that they were among the most beautiful pieces of sculpture that I had ever seen. Some time later, I wrote a blog post about that building and about its terracotta statues, in which I expressed my love for those statues and wondered who was the artist behind them?

A few months later, some one from Villa Spada, perhaps its owner, wrote back on my blog, specifying that the statues were the work of Nicola Zamboni. I immediately remembered Nicola's name from the Humanity exhibition. I was impressed by the fact that Nicola seemed equally good with bronze as with terracotta.

The Strange People of Pilastro Park

In the beginning of 2013, I visited a park located in the Pilastro area of Bologna. The park had some strange sculptures - of people walking from one corner of the park towards its centre, where they had an open air theatre. The people were without faces near the corner of the park and as they came near the theatre, their faces became more defined.

Looking for Nicola Zamboni

I was a little intrigued by those sculptures in the park. They were completely unlike any other sculptures that I had seen.

One day I did an internet search to learn more about those sculptures and found that they were also the work of Nicola Zamboni. So finally I decided that it was time for me to search for Nicola and try to meet them.

A search on internet helped me to find Nicola's webpage and contact, so I called him. When I told him that I was from India and I wanted to meet him, suddenly I felt his voice change - he was immediately warm and enthusiastic about the idea of my visit to meet him.

"It must be destiny that you searched for us, because we have been thinking and talking so much about India these last few months", he gushed.

Later when I went to visit him, I discovered the reason for his enthusiasm! About this, you can read more in the next post about Nicola and Sara.

In the mean time you can admire this sculpture of Nicola Zamboni from Villa Spada, that I love so much. I think that the woman of this sculpture is disabled, a woman without her right arm, but I am not sure about it. Her face expresses so much tenderness! For tourists coming to Bologna, I always tell them that they should not miss a visit to Villa Spada - these sculptures should be a must for all art lovers visiting Bologna!

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Read More About Nicola Zamboni & Sara Bolzani

Meet the artist: Sara Bolzoni

Meet the artist: Nicola Zamboni

Working together Sara Bolzoni & Nicola Zamboni 

Castelvetrano and the Greek ruins of Selinunte (1)

Castelvetrano is a small town in the province of Trapani at the western tip of Sicily island in the south of Italy. It is famous for the Greek ruins from 6th century BC at Selinunte. Recently I was in Castelvetrano. This first part of my Castelvetrano diary focuses on the city, while the second part will focus on the Greek ruins of Selinunte.

I saw this pictorial map of Sicily island (image above) at a school in Castelvetrano. The city of Castelvetrano is located near the western tip of the island (where it shows the Greek ruins of Selinunte on the left, just below the windmill).

Chiesa Madre and the centre of Castelvetrano

When I had first heard of Castelvetrano, I had imagined it as the town with a "glass castle" (Castel = castle and Vetro = Glass). However, friends explained that the name of the city probably came from a settlement of ancient military veterans, a "castle of veterans".

The first historical records of Castelvetrano date back to thirteenth century when the dukes of Angioini from west of France gave this area to Tagliavia  (Aragon) family.

The city was famous for its vineyards and olive cultivation. The centre of the city is the Garibaldi square and the nearby Aragona -Tagliavia square. Garibaldi square has the Chiesa Madre (Mother Church) from 1520 AD, built at the site of an older church. Inside the church, the portion around the altar is richly decorated with frescoes, statues and plaster-of-Paris works.

The chapel on the right side of the Mother church, has stairs going down to the crypts below, where I found a curious structure that I had never seen before - a place for preparing mummification or drying of the dead bodies. The crypt room cut into the rock has rows of "chairs", each chair with a hole in the centre, a little like chamber-pots or toilets. These rows are marked as "reserved for the clergy", "for the superiors of the church" and "for noble families". I was told that the bodies of the dead persons were put there so that they could "expel their liquids" and become dry for the burial or mummification.

This kind of burial practices could have been linked to ideas about the "day of judgement" and that "dead people will come alive on that day".

It seems as if this place had been in use till relatively recently. It had a kind of morbid fascination for me! I could imagine some kind of a horror film being shot there with smelly rows of dead bodies sitting there and "expelling their liquids"! (image below).

On the side of the street in front of the Mother Church is the wonderful "Fountain of the Nymph" built in 1615 AD by Orazio Nigrone. It provided public water to the people living around that area. The water was brought to the fountain by an aqueduct built by Bigini. The water gurgling out of a vase held by a nymph at the top of the fountain, fell down in three levels of trays underneath the nymph. However, now the fountain seemed to be dry.

Close to the chiesa Madre, on one side of the Aragon-Tagliavia square is the family home of Aragons (Palazzo Pignatelli) that now holds the municipal offices.

Other places of interest

Other important places of interest in this area are the monument to Prof. Giovanni Gentile credited with the educational reforms in Italy after the first world war in 1920.

Close to the Gentile monument is the ancient Purgatory church (Chiesa del Purgatorio) built in 1642 AD at the site of another more ancient church. It is now used as an auditorium.

Finally there is Selinus theatre, built in late nineteenth century in neo-classical style with stairs in the front and an entrance hall with Doric columns. The entrance hosts a sculpture of children by Mario Rutelli (brought here from another local villa) as well as busts of two famous Italian literary figures -  Dante and Pirandello.

Apart from the central and historical part of the city, Castelvetrano also has some other interesting churches - San Francesco da Paola church, San Giuseppe church and Santa Maria della Salute church. Among these my favourite is San Giuseppe that was damaged during an earthquake in 1968 and was never repaired. The ruins of this broken down church are very evocative.

Plants and trees

Apart from the vineyards and olive grooves, I saw some interesting plants and trees in Castelvetrano. At a friend's house in Castelvetrano, I was surprised to see a pepper tree, that are so common in Kerala in India.

Another surprise was to see plants and flowers from Cape Town region of South Africa including Aloe Vera and Strelitzia flowers.

Let me end this post with a wonderful image of oranges. Castelvetrano was full of fruit-trees including different varieties of oranges, mandarins and lemons.

Another of my favourites were the Sicilian sweets made with fresh ricotta cheese including the calorie-bombs called "canoli". I ate so many of them since it was so difficult to resist them. And now I need to do some serious dieting!

The second part of this post will be about the sixth century BC ruins of the Greek settlement of Selinunte, near Castelvetrano.

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Salerno, the city of lights

Salerno on the western coast of Italy, just south of Naples, is famous for its artistic Christmas lights. Recently I had a couple of hours in Salerno, waiting for my train. I used that time for a brief visit to the city and to admire its beautiful lights. This post presents some images from this visit.

Just outside the Salerno railway station is a small square with a monument to the soldiers who had died in the first world war (image below). It was a rainy day but fortunately for me, while I was there, it did not rain!

From the railway station I took Corso Vittorio Emmanuele, the central street of Salerno with all the shops and restaurants. No vehicles are allowed on this road, so it was a pleasure to take a leisurely walk and look around. Here I had a first glimpse of the famous lights of Salerno. I had seen beautiful pictures of these lights at night and could imagine that they would be wonderful. I regretted that my visit was in the day.

From Corso, I walked to the 11th century Duomo (Cathedral). The cathedral is quite simple and unadorned. The entrance leads to an open courtyard with some old tombs along the walls. The arcades in Romanic style are in polychromatic stones giving a wonderful look to this place.

The bell-tower of the cathedral in Arabic-Norman style is especially beautiful because of the polychromatic designs made by stones of different colours.

In the old city, there were several small shrines to Madonna and the saints like this beautiful small shrine to St. Rita, not far from the cathedral.

After walking in the old part of Salerno, I came down to the seaside, where there is the municipal building with the clock-tower and behind on the top of a hill, you can see the Arechi castle.

The seaside has rows of square boulders to create a barrier for protecting the city from high waves. On these boulders, a series of statues of grey-yellow coloured penguins have been put that gives the place a funny-happy kind of look.

While walking along the seaside, I met Michela, a woman who owns a bar in the city and brings the old unused bread for distributing to the seagulls. It was absolutely marvellous to see her surrounded by the birds and it gave me an opportunity to take some beautiful pictures!

Artistic lights of Salerno

The most beautiful part of this short visit was to see the beautiful city lights that are set up each year around mid-December and continue till the beginning of February. Unfortunately I could not be there to admire those lights at night, still it was wonderful to see them brightening up the narrow streets of the old city.

The lights were in different styles. For example, two squares were decorated in Chinese style with lacquered boxes, colourful lanterns and a brightly shining dragon that must have looked spectacular at night.

I especially loved the lights with some colourful flowers in translucent plastic. Take a look at the images below for some close-ups of these flowers.

My couple of hours in Salerno passed so quickly. There were so many more streets with other kinds of lights that I could not see. In the end, my only regret was that I could not see those lights at night.

The last image of this post is from a hill near Salerno that shows the bay with the tourist port. So even without the lights, Salerno seems to be a beautiful place to live in with the wonderful walkway along the sea. It was a short visit but very enjoyable!

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Fatal assistance - Reconstruction chaos

"Fatal Assistance", the documentary film by director Raoul Peck, follows the massive destruction in Haiti caused by an earthquake on 12 January 2010. It looks at the promises and the challenges of the country's reconstruction. It paints a dismal picture of the response by the international emergency humanitarian-aid world to the tragedy.

"Fatal Assistance" will be a part of the International Documentary Film festival called "Mondovisioni" that will be held at Kinodromo - Cinema Europa in Bologna (Italy) from January to April 2014. "Fatal Assistance" will be shown on Wednesday 5 March 2014 at 9 PM.

Introduction

Natural disasters like earthquakes, cyclones, floods and landslides and man-made disasters like bombs and wars can cause massive destructions and loss of human lives. The global TV networks and the 24x7 TV news channels provide a trans-national platform to news about such disasters as they occur, showing horrifying images of destruction and human suffering. The reach of the news channels is accompanied by the growth of the social media, so that enterprising individuals can share information, pictures and videos about the events, adding a more personal human element to the far-away news. Usually this results in outpouring of  popular support and donations as people wish to help those affected by the disasters.

A whole "emergency humanitarian aid" industry has sprung-up around natural disasters. Thus industry swings into action as soon as the news breaks out. The roots of this industry are mainly based in the developed world especially in Europe and USA where important humanitarian organisations are based with their offices across the world and with budgets that rival national budgets.

"Fatal Assistance" touches on this theme by focusing on the damages caused to the buildings and homes in Haiti, their impact on peoples' lives and the international humanitarian efforts for their reconstruction.

The Film

On 12 January 2010 a massive earthquake, 7 degrees on the Richter scale, shook Haiti. About 220,000 persons died in the disaster according to the estimates by Haitian Government. Thousands of buildings and homes collapsed in the earthquake. The scenes of the tragedy dominated TV news-screens around the world and countries promised millions of dollars' worth of aid.

An International Commission for Reconstruction of Haiti (ICRH) was formed under the guidance of ex-president of USA Bill Clinton. UN agencies, bilateral government agencies, international emergency humanitarian organisations and NGOs arrived in Haiti to promote the reconstruction and ensure health care, rehabilitation, education and community support.

As months passed, it became clear that aid actually received was a small part of what was promised and it was not enough to cover the cost of US army to clear all the debris of the collapsed buildings and homes. Thus, reconstruction was difficult and extremely limited.

People were forced to come out and occupy whatever open spaces they could find to set up make shift shelters as their homes.

The response by the different agencies and organisations was chaotic. There were many duplications and unnecessary competitions among the organisations in some areas because different organisations had approved projects to carry out the same work - for example, 4 organisations were working on cleaning the same canal. On the other hand, lack of coordination meant that many other areas were left uncovered as no organisation was working there.

Some organisations worked on making new homes. However, this was also not planned properly. In one example shown in the film, a rocky area 18 km away from the city was selected for building homes. It lacked essential services and houses were built without toilets or kitchens, and when it rained, water came inside those houses.

The film also shows the human dimension of the tragedy in different ways - on one hand, important international figures like Clinton and Sean Penn who, in spite of their good intentions, seem to play the role of supermen and heroes, on the other, Haiti's president Preval and prime minister Bellrive, appear powerless in front of the foreigners who have the money and the ideas they wish to implement without talking about them to the locals. In a scene, the Haitian members of ICRH denounce that they are in the commission just in name, they are completely ignored and are not involved in any decisions.

Comments

The film presents a classic textbook case of how not to deal with development work. Unfortunately, in emergency situations, it seems impossible not to fall in the traps of rich donors dictating the kind of "help" they want to give. It is difficult to get out of the chaos because "humanitarian help" is part of countries' foreign policy and trade-commerce related issues are important in the aid-programmes. Thus, millions promised during the emergency, are given through contracts to expatriate companies, who want to earn and for them helping persons is secondary. In the end, large amount of aid-money comes back to them through their own companies.

Interference in the national elections, controlling and deciding without involving local partners, shown in the film are things that are known to all the actors involved in the situation, though they are hidden behind rhetoric and double-speak.

Personally I think that film's message that the money should have been given directly to people, was a little naive. I think that it leads to other problems and tragedies. Corrupt bureaucrats and corrupt politicians on one hand and difficulties of managing huge amounts of sudden cash, both contribute to it.

Local organisations and international NGOs with long history and experiences of working in those communities are both better placed to identify needs and provide appropriate support in emergencies. However they are usually small organisations and can not compete with big multi-national organisations that control the international emergency-aid industry. They are also few and can not respond to the enormous needs that are there in such situations.

Finally I think that nothing can substitute the country's own management capacities and their insistence on coordinating the relief efforts. Ideally they should refuse aid which they can not coordinate. It does become however very difficult to resist the pressures and controls of international organisations, who can bulldoze all the national efforts.

Though the chaos are caused by faulty planning and implementation guidelines and procedures decided in Europe or USA, it is the persons who work at the frontlines for these organisations who take the blame and try to find solutions. The film shows different moments of anguish of such persons, moved by idealism and a desire to help, who find themselves caught between the limits of their roles and their desire to help those whose suffering they are witnessing. They are the ones who salvage the humanitarian aid by their personal humanism and testimony.

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