Finissage “Bosco di Lecce” at the Must

Sunday 11 February, at 17.30 pm, at MUST, Historical Museum of the City of Lecce, the finissage of the exhibition “Bosco di Lecce” by Yuval Avital will be held. For the occasion, the rooms hosting the exhibition will host a traveling theatrical performance in collaboration with Teatro Koerja, which will feature the company's actresses Andjelka Vulic, Emanuela Pisicchio, Luna Maggio and Federica Toni.

With this exhibition, curated by Lorenzo Madaro (Lecce Biblio-Museum Centre) with the coordination of Federica Tornese, Avital, a multifaceted Israeli artist who has long lived in Italy, entered into dialogue with Lecce in a process of collective creation, performances, art rites, material compositions and works conceived together with citizens and artisans, ideally transforming the inhabitants of the Salento capital into trees and the city into a human forest, to try to reduce the growing gap between man and nature.

In the rooms of the Must, “Forest of Lecce” it is set up as a single large immersive installation, with large canvases and thirty sculptures, which accounts for all the shared artistic action, in which the chorality of the participants and the multiplicity of languages ​​merge in a stratification of experiences.

The collaboration between the artist and the Koreja Theater, born on the occasion of Avital's residency in Lecce, does not end with the realization of the performance “Radici”, presented in a dedicated room of the museum, but continues for this occasion open to the public. A final invitation to the citizens, involved in art performances and rites, welcomed first in the atelier at the small church of San Giovanni di Dio in via Palmieri and subsequently in the return to the museum, who will now be able to attend an unprecedented and site-specific performance created by the artist with the Koreja Theater.

On the occasion of the performance, on Sunday, it will be possible to visit the exhibition for free and they will be present Avital and Madaro to accompany participants on the visit.

Bosco di Lecce is the final act of a project complex and articulated relational art, promoted by the Municipality of Lecce - Department of Culture, Must - Historical Museum of the city of Lecce, supported and financed by the Puglia Region, Teatro Pubblico Pugliese, Polo Biblio-museale of Lecce and conceived in collaboration with the Biscozzi Foundation | Rimbaud.

«We conclude Yuval Avital's project – declares the Councilor for Culture Fabiana Cicirillo – as we conceived and created it, that is, in the name of participation, involvement, the mixture of different artistic languages. If there is material, visual and audiovisual art in the exhibition, with the finissage all this will be put into dialogue with Koreja's performative theatre. I thank all the people who believed in this project together with us, from the Region with the director Aldo Patruno to the TPP with the president Paolo Ponzio and the vice-president Marco Giannotta, to all the staff of the Bibliomuseale Center directed by Luigi De Luca, to the Biscozzi Foundation Rimbaud. And of course Yuval, Lorenzo and Federica who kept everything together, allowing the city to live this unprecedented and immersive experience."

«We are happy to have been able to accompany the Municipality of Lecce and the Puglia Region in the creation of an exhibition which was first and foremost a participatory act, a fusion of languages ​​and experiences, whose path, through the large immersive installation created inside the Must, wanted to bridge the gap between man and nature, ideally transforming the inhabitants of the Salento capital into trees and the city into a human forest", added Paolo Ponzio, president of the Teatro Pubblico Pugliese.

For Luigi De Luca, director of the Biblio-Museum Center of Lecce «the project by the artist Yuval Avital thoroughly represented what the Polo, Puglia Region and TPP intend when they pool their energies together with other partners to generate a thought around contemporary art. Not a mere contemplative exhibition, but an active project, capable of regenerating places and realities, involving associations and many other interlocutors, also making their skills and professionalism available. Contemporary art is nourished by dialogue and relationships. The Bosco di Lecce represented all this."