It’s only early June but the southern Italian heat is already powerful and oppressive. I slowly move from one abandoned building… to a church… to a garden, welcoming each venue an opportunity to retreat from the midday sun. As a first-time visitor to this city the ‘cross-fertilisation’ of cultures the Mayor speaks of is strongly felt. Historically the city has been shaped by Ancient Greek, Arabic, Norman and Christian powers. Whilst presently the market places are filled with Asian, African and European traders alongside the zucchini, melanzana and limone symbolic of Sicily’s rich agriculture if somewhat poor economy. Geographically Palermo is the bridge between the Mediterranean and Europe and Manifesta 12 uses this unique location to host a number of projects that predict optimistically the possible humanitarian, cultural and environmental benefits of increased movement and less borders.
Leone Conti, Foreign Farmers, 2018
Foreign Farmers, a collaborative project between artist Leone Contini and various migrant communities across Italy, is an experimental vegetable garden in the former colonial section of Palermo’s Botanical Gardens. Its a simple premise where varieties of veg from different communities grow alongside one another, but the experimental garden and its structure is a suitably grass roots intervention in the Orto Botanico.
Cooking sections, What is above is what is below, 2018
A section of the project, What is above is what is below, uses an architectural structure to passively cool three citrus trees and enable them to bear fruit in the heat of the Sicilian summer. Effectively ‘watering with stones’ the structure provides a cool and reflective place to recover from the heat of the day, which makes slightly more palatable 10euro drought-resistant picnic lunch of lentils I just forked out for from the upmarket cafe down the road.
Uriel Orlow, Wishing Trees, 2018
Wishing Trees is a video installation by Uriel Orlow that traces three Sicilian trees, each of which hold significance in the history of the island.
A cypress tree located near Palermo that was planted by the first black saint of the Catholic Church, St. Benedict; a towering Moreton Bay fig in central Palermo that continues to grow outside the former residence of anti-mafia judge Giovanni Falcone and his wife Francesca Morvillo, both assassinated in 1992 and an Olive tree in the village of Cassibile beneath which the WWII armistice was signed.
A highlight of the installation is a detailed interview with Simona Mafai, an activist for womens and workers rights, as well as strong voice against domestic violence and the mafia. The document she helped produce and circulate ‘Nine inconvenient tips for the citizen who wants to fight the mafia’ is an affirmation of the impacts an individual can have against oppressive systems of power.
