Grand Tour en Italie | Napoli

From 19 to 26 November 2022, after several postponements and digital exchanges, due to the Covid 19 pandemic, we have finally given life to the Neapolitan stage of Grand Tour en Italie, a travelling residency project for artists and curators, conceived and curated by Michela Eremita and Susanna Ravelli, for which SuperOtium has taken care of the relations with the territory.

Now in its third edition, after stopping off in Palermo as a collateral project of Manifesta 12 in 2018 and in San Giminiano during Nottelucenti in the 2019 Grand Tour en Italie, it now arrives in Naples, from 19 to 26 November2022 to coincide with the initiatives of the Naples Art Days in which the residency and open studios are included.

The Neapolitan leg of the project, curated by Susanna Ravelli with the support of Michela Eremita, is inspired by the Grand Tour, understood as a practice of artistic training and production in the footsteps of the tradition of the journeys made by intellectuals and artists between the 18th and 19th centuries. It is an itinerant residency programme that mainly involves mid-career artists in reflection on the themes of travel, migration and the rediscovery of places as a source of inspiration and aesthetic and interdisciplinary investigation.

The themes linked to the exploration of unknown places thus become an opportunity to meet and migrating acquires a positive connotation, becoming synonymous with exchange, with that interweaving with the different that leads to an enrichment and expansion of knowledge. The aim of Grand Tour en Italie is to tell the story of Italy through the eyes of selected female artists who, through their work, which consists of the realisation of a real travel diary, express their impressions of a specific geographical area with its people, its culture and its historical and artistic heritage.

The protagonists of this all-female residency are: Maura Banfo, Simona Da Pozzo, Concetta Modica, Stefania Mazzola, Tiziana Pers and Isabella Pers. The artists, thanks to the residency and the encounter with the realities of the Neapolitan city, created new works in the form of a project in progress with drawings, images, sculptures and artist’s notebooks to lay the foundations of a work for Naples.

The residency, engaged the artists in a series of workshops and meetings, on the occasion of the Art Days in Naples, from 24 November to 26 thanks also to a special white night, from sunset on the 25th, dedicated to meetings and dialogues with the presence of art critic Pietro Gaglianò, the curators of the Art Days and numerous guests who stayed late into the night.