Un pomeriggio al MAC di Gibellina

Leaving the MAC (Museum of Contemporary Art) in Gibellina, I thought I was lucky. There are two main reasons: the first is for having visited a beautiful and exciting museum like few others in Italy; the second reason is for the information I had acquired, the art inside left me a strong sense of contentment mixed with a desire to be there.

Upon entering, one immediately has the sensation of a place from another dimension. The architecture is modern and minimalist, the welcoming white of the walls matches the smiles of the ladies who welcome you with kindness and availability. They tell us that residents of Sicily have a discount, it seems to me a valid reason to show off my Palermo dialect.

Throughout last summer, the MAC hosted a photographic exhibition dedicated to Frida Kahlo. More than one hundred original photographs that tell the life, art, friendships, loves and historical events of one of the most important female artists of the 20th century. We are instructed to scan a qr-code that takes us back to a site where we can listen to an audio guide, it works very well.

There are eight rooms at the MAC. The itinerary begins with the story of the earthquake that wiped out the towns of Gibellina, Poggioreale, Salaparuta and Montevago on the night between 14 and 15 January 1968. Ludovico Corrao – the mayor at the time to whom the museum is dedicated – called together artists and intellectuals and began his battle against bureaucracy and destruction, strongly believing that beauty can heal any wound. A sentence of his is engraved on one wall: «Come to Gibellina, let the flowers of art and culture grow in the desert of earthquake, of destiny, of oblivion».

The elegance of the setting up of paintings, blow-ups, models, architectural archetypes and sketches of sculpture works in the city centre, bring to life a place that no longer exists. The presence of the artists who, with their important contribution, made it reborn and imposed on the national scene can be felt from the beginning to the end. There is Guttuso, Leonardo Sciascia, Letizia Battaglia, but above all there is Alberto Burri. The presence of him through the work of art that today attracts tourists from all over the world is very strong. The Cretto di Burri is located 11 km away from the new town, where Gibellina once stood: an enormous flow of cement covered the rubble of the town like a large shroud on which the artist then reconstructed the plan of the historic center transforming the streets into furrows, thus giving life to a labyrinth of over 80 thousand square meters.

«… here, if I have to do something, I can do it here… I do this: we compact the rubble… we arm it well, and with the cement we make an immense white crack so that it remains a perennial reminder of this event…”

Alberto Burri

I was at the Cretto di Burri a year ago, but the atmosphere of reconstruction was unknown to me. The MAC has allowed me to collect the testimonies of those who have done something to rebuild, leaving an indelible mark on the place. The reconstruction of Gibellina is thanks to the man who believed in art, a valid reason to resist.the man who believed in art, a valid reason to resist.

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