La costante resistenzale
A guide-tour of Sardinian archaic, weird and marvelous stone sculpture (and architecture)
The atlas is an ongoing collection of images of found sculptures from Sardinia. This photographic archive is at the base of AGTSAWMSS and spans through an heterogeneous series of images (mainly sculptures) which all share a common barbaric, anti classical, rude and "resistant" origin.
A guide-tour of Sardinian archaic weird and marvelous stone sculpture investigates different forms of sculpture, architecture and artistic expression from Sardinia, tracing and retracing historical heritages and anthropological continuity in the artistic production of the island.
This research unravels through several means: exhibitions, texts, maps but mainly through a photographic journey based on a road trip to discover, document and analise ignored or forgotten artworks: out of this journey takes shape the "Atlante".
The island of Sardinia is inhabited by thousands of stone sculptures, mainly popular productions that no one seem to take into account as a form of anthropological or artistic knowledge; while these images seem to be revealing a strength and survivalness we feel fruitful and compelling, worth to be explored and make known.
A guide-tour of Sardinian archaic weird and marvelous stone sculptures is intended to present sculptures and architectures we believe to be carrying a form of “resistance” as presented by Sardinian archaeologist Giovanni Lilliu. This concept, to be translated as “The permanence of resistance” (La costante resistenziale) refers to Sardinian culture’s strength in maintaining characters of its own identity through the various and different forms of colonizations that occupied our island.
We are fascinated by that imagery which escapes self-exoticization, or self-historicization: this selection does not include productions that consciously refer to traditional sardinian imagery: nuragic or mamuthones based kitsch sculptures won’t be part of the survey, as being little more than touristic repertoire. While these are attempts at self-exoticize and reference to a mythical past of this land, the primitive forms, the non-culture, have no date, they are ahistorical.
We believe the idea presented by Lilliu could be better understood through the notion of Nachleben proposed by Aby Warburg: if an unpredictability of images exist, so that they survive beyond logic and style, it is not because of conscious choices, but because they are latent shapes; they can vanish and reappear without ever dying. There’s a certain mysterious permanence of the Image which trespasses chronological time, history of art, and survives in mankind, in its desire for expression, somethings which anticipates the notion of art itself.
This proto-storic sense of the image, spontaneous and archaic in its almost cultual meaning, is the focus of this new project and its long journey through Sardinia times and spaces.
La costante resistenzale
A guide-tour of Sardinian archaic, weird and marvelous stone sculpture (and architecture)
The atlas is an ongoing collection of images of found sculptures from Sardinia. This photographic archive is at the base of AGTSAWMSS and spans through an heterogeneous series of images (mainly sculptures) which all share a common barbaric, anti classical, rude and "resistant" origin.
A guide-tour of Sardinian archaic weird and marvelous stone sculpture investigates different forms of sculpture, architecture and artistic expression from Sardinia, tracing and retracing historical heritages and anthropological continuity in the artistic production of the island.
This research unravels through several means: exhibitions, texts, maps but mainly through a photographic journey based on a road trip to discover, document and analise ignored or forgotten artworks: out of this journey takes shape the "Atlante".
The island of Sardinia is inhabited by thousands of stone sculptures, mainly popular productions that no one seem to take into account as a form of anthropological or artistic knowledge; while these images seem to be revealing a strength and survivalness we feel fruitful and compelling, worth to be explored and make known.
A guide-tour of Sardinian archaic weird and marvelous stone sculptures is intended to present sculptures and architectures we believe to be carrying a form of “resistance” as presented by Sardinian archaeologist Giovanni Lilliu. This concept, to be translated as “The permanence of resistance” (La costante resistenziale) refers to Sardinian culture’s strength in maintaining characters of its own identity through the various and different forms of colonizations that occupied our island.
We are fascinated by that imagery which escapes self-exoticization, or self-historicization: this selection does not include productions that consciously refer to traditional sardinian imagery: nuragic or mamuthones based kitsch sculptures won’t be part of the survey, as being little more than touristic repertoire. While these are attempts at self-exoticize and reference to a mythical past of this land, the primitive forms, the non-culture, have no date, they are ahistorical.
We believe the idea presented by Lilliu could be better understood through the notion of Nachleben proposed by Aby Warburg: if an unpredictability of images exist, so that they survive beyond logic and style, it is not because of conscious choices, but because they are latent shapes; they can vanish and reappear without ever dying. There’s a certain mysterious permanence of the Image which trespasses chronological time, history of art, and survives in mankind, in its desire for expression, somethings which anticipates the notion of art itself.
This proto-storic sense of the image, spontaneous and archaic in its almost cultual meaning, is the focus of this new project and its long journey through Sardinia times and spaces.