INSTITUTIONS

Alessandra Locatelli
Presidency of the Council of Ministers
Minister for Disabilities

Dear President Sergio Mario Illuminato, dear all,

on the occasion of the closing day of the “iosonovulnerabile” event, I would like to extend my closeness to you and to all participants.

I warmly greet the authorities present, the distinguished speakers, the VulnerarTe APS Movement, the students, the teachers, and all those who contributed to making today’s event and the entire project possible.

These are important occasions to reflect, raise awareness, and above all take stock of the actions that we must continue to implement together in order to ensure that every person has the opportunity to fully live the life of our communities.

Art and culture can do a great deal; they allow us to explore new forms of expression and are fundamental in fostering the new approach we are promoting, which asks us to begin seeing the potential in every person rather than their limitations.

The major challenge before us is precisely this: we must provide occasions, create opportunities, and invest in the talents and skills of each individual. The issue of inclusion is increasingly central, and I am convinced that this is the right time to highlight how much can be achieved if we truly believe in it.

The disability reform we are implementing, the introduction of the Life Project, and the G7 on Inclusion and Disability itself—the first in history, which we wanted and believed in—have outlined an innovative, turning-point path on issues concerning people.

This is a moment of change, a great challenge to continue with ever greater determination and unity, and to ensure everyone the right to full participation in the civic, social, and political life of our country. Thank you all for what you do and will continue to do in service of others, in the awareness that together we are stronger and can do more and better.

With esteem,

Hon. Alessandra Locatelli
Minister for Disabilities
Presidency of the Council of Ministers

Federico Mollicone
Chair of the Culture Committee of the Chamber of Deputies

The cultural initiative “iosonovulnerabile, failure is an achievement – art is loving error”, curated by Sergio Mario Illuminato, represents—through its transdisciplinary nature— an innovative and creative model of artistic valorisation.

Congratulations to the Italian Cultural Institute in Paris for having taken a chance on this project, and to Director Antonio Calbi for his commitment to promoting Italian culture worldwide.

As the Culture Committee of the Chamber of Deputies, we strongly support the activities of Italian Institutes abroad and collaborate with them in important cultural diplomacy initiatives. They are true outposts of our tradition, which must increasingly take on a central role in the system for promoting literature and live performance.

I also congratulate all the institutions involved and curator Sergio Mario Illuminato for conceiving this initiative, for the major contribution it offers to the field of visual arts, and for being included in the twentieth Contemporary Art Day, the major annual event promoted by the Association of Italian Contemporary Art Museums with the support of the General Directorate for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture and in collaboration with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, which has always certified the excellence of contemporary art in Italy and abroad.

Also praiseworthy is the artist’s intention to convey and share the concept of “vulnerability” not only through performative art, but through a truly multidisciplinary approach, which makes this project a particularly valuable and complete cultural unicum. The author’s first work, the short film “Vulnerare”, completes a path that gathers and enhances all creative practices—photography, visual art, dance, cinema— within a framework of urban requalification and an innovative vision of space.

As highlighted in the evocative “imaginary” interview with Pasolini and in the works presented in the exhibition, the central axis of the entire cultural project is the theme of vulnerability, which can be expressed aesthetically and across disciplines in many ways. Vulnerable is, for example, the socially fragile individual, the degraded neighbourhood that is not redeveloped, the family left alone in its hardship. Art has the mythopoetic capacity to transform this vulnerability—decay, distress, suffering and loneliness—into beauty. As curator Illuminato writes, “art is not a luxury, but a vital necessity.”

Pier Paolo Pasolini himself embodied this ideal. A personal life lived in solitude—as he wrote— became the path to his complete artistic freedom and independence. In 1969, at the height of his creative and literary production, he wrote: “I am completely alone. And, moreover, in the hands of whoever wants to strike me. I am blackmailable, I am vulnerable.” This vulnerability made him one of the most incisive poets of the twentieth century, who still today inspires—as this cultural project demonstrates—artists across all fields.

In my capacity as Chair of the Culture Committee, I extend my most sincere best wishes for this valuable initiative.

Marco Maria Cerbo
Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation

The project “iosonovulnerabile”—curated by Sergio Mario Illuminato— is a performative practice that, between 2023 and 2024, brilliantly involved artists and professionals from visual arts, cinema, photography, dance, and music.

The synergy created together with teachers and students from the Academy of Fine Arts and Roman high schools is an extraordinary example of how art can bring together different disciplines in a creative and inclusive dialogue.

The artist residency “Officina Alchemica delle Idee” has demonstrated the extreme creativity of the people involved. The “VulnerarTe APS Movement”—accredited in the National Register of the Third Sector—represents an admirable example of innovation and inclusion, addressing the theme of vulnerability through art with sensitivity.

Also noteworthy is the editorial initiative “VulnerarTe Magazine”, which has dedicated space to reflection on vulnerability.

The Pathways for Transversal Skills and Orientation (PCTO) “Entering outside, exiting inside”—in collaboration with schools in Rome and its province—is a further example of how education can be integrated with art and how such educational projects can prepare students for a deeper understanding of contemporary reality.

The International Programme will take place in 2024 and 2025 at the Italian Cultural Institutes, under the coordination of the Directorate-General for Public and Cultural Diplomacy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, in a framework aimed at enhancing Italian cultural heritage at a global level.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is actively committed, across all its sectors, to a more equitable and inclusive society, recognising that culture is a valuable tool for promoting dialogue between peoples and increasing mutual understanding.

The Farnesina indeed aims to make culture accessible to all, overcoming economic, social, and physical barriers.

Antonio Calbi
Director of the Italian Cultural Institute

The summer of 2024 was, for Paris, the summer of sport. It was also so for the Italian Cultural Institute, which celebrated the Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games with the rich programme Passions Olympiques.

This special summer cultural programme was an opportunity to recall that the beauty of sport lies in its “peaceful” competition, that sport must be inclusive, just as culture must be. The Olympic and Paralympic Games are now over, but the work towards an accessible and inclusive culture never ends.

The monumental works created by the VulnerarTe Movement during a residency in the former prison of Velletri engage in dialogue with the graffiti left by inmates when the prison was still in operation. Within the practice of the movement, visual arts are combined with music, cinema, and dance in a significant project bearing a humble name: iosonovulnerabile.

This multidisciplinary event reflects the complexity of the world we live in and its devices address a theme that culture must never forget: the vulnerability of those who create and the vulnerability of those who look, and ultimately human vulnerability itself.

The installations presented on this occasion invite us to look beyond the nightmares of the twenty-first century—which began under the sign of global terror with the collapse of the Twin Towers and continue today with the mad wars in Ukraine and Palestine—and thus summarise the aim we set ourselves every day: to fight abuses, wars, and violence through culture, artistic gestures, and the practice of thought and dialogue.

These are not only actions of resilience, but of forward-looking construction of the future.

Iosonovulnerabile is a research project directly inspired by Sergio Mario Illuminato’s book Corpus e Vulnus: Tàpies, Kiefer, Parmiggiani. The artistic practice that motivates this project is an heir to Informal and Conceptual art.

And it is no coincidence that iosonovulnerabile will encounter, at the Hôtel de Galliffet, the work of the great Italian master of conceptual art: Claudio Parmiggiani.

A canoe filled with pure powdered pigments will be the honorary work of the autumn. Through this work Parmiggiani stages absence: the absence of water, the absence of a point of departure and arrival, the absence of the rower.

As in the works presented within the iosonovulnerabile project, representation disappears and gives way to contemplation and meditation on the human condition.

All these works lose their reason for existence without the viewer: it is their presence, their gaze, and their inner movements that give them meaning, that allow them to live and express themselves.

Many other initiatives of the Institute will continue to remind us that culture must make us reflect on the fragile condition of human reality: with the exhibition of Domenico Notarangelo’s photographs from the set of Pasolini’s The Gospel According to Matthew, we will rediscover a fragile Matera, which had not yet rediscovered the pride of its ancient identity; with the re-presentation of Viaggio in Italia, the account of the transformations of the Italian landscape conceived by Luigi Ghirri, we will retrace the fractured beauties of the most beautiful peninsula in the world; the lucid and anguished cry of Hecuba—Anna Galiena—in Alessandra Puliafico’s rewriting of Euripides’ The Trojan Women will make us revolt against the destruction and suffering caused by wars unleashed by humans; we will remember Giacomo Matteotti, murdered by fascists one hundred years ago; we will approach with care the fragility of Goliarda Sapienza; we will debate cities and humanity, the first episodes of a series of encounters organised in collaboration with the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales; Dacia Maraini will tell us about when, as a child, she was held in a detention camp in Japan during the Second World War; we will recall the Mattarella assassination through Aurelio Grimaldi’s film; and we have asked Fiammetta Borsellino, daughter of the judge murdered by the terrible intertwining of mafia and corrupted powers, to share with us her commitment to educating future generations in legality, the first step towards rejecting all forms of violence.

All this and much more reminds us that culture is an opportunity for education, growth, and sometimes even struggle against injustice. The first step is to accept our own fragilities.

In a world that continues to demand perfection, we choose to exalt vulnerability, the beauty of the simple, pure gesture.

Miguel Gotor
Councillor for Culture, Rome Capital

This avant-garde artistic experiment expands the cultural offer of Rome and its surrounding area and reaches a new international dimension with a transdisciplinary performative practice carried out at the Italian Cultural Institute in Paris.

“iosonovulnerabile”, curated by Sergio Mario Illuminato, is the title of the project, which captures the soul and fragility of the human being.

The first chapter of this research took place in the evocative setting of the former Pontifical Prison of Velletri, a place that for over thirty years remained forgotten, but which has been reawakened as a space dedicated to art and dialogue.

The former Pontifical Prison of Velletri, decommissioned in 1991, was specifically chosen for this experience. Here, art is not confined to the classic white rooms of a gallery, but merges with worn stone walls and bars that bear witness to its carceral past.

This space challenges the viewer, generating an emotional impact and opening new possibilities for reflection for future generations. This site, once a place of constraint and suffering, has become a fertile ground for creativity and reflection, thanks to the commitment of a group of visionary artists.

Entering these abandoned cells, the artists perceived a profound call, an invitation to rediscover and reinterpret historical memory through art.

They did not simply create works, but gave life to true “Communicating Artistic Organisms”, living and pulsating entities that dialogue with past and present, with materials and ideas.

This project is not only an aesthetic experience, but an ethical and intellectual journey that forces us to confront the fragility of the human condition. The cracks in the walls, the traces left by prisoners, tell stories of suffering and resistance that we cannot ignore.

The artists, as custodians of memory, explored these living ruins, bringing back to light what risked being forgotten forever.

The second chapter of this three-part journey is being realized in France, with a stop of international significance in Paris.

Here, art embraces human vulnerability, a theme that is increasingly relevant in a world that often seems to move at a frenetic pace.

In an era dominated by individualism and competition, we tend to hide our fragilities behind seemingly strong facades. But in reality, we are all vulnerable in unique ways.

Exploring this vulnerability can be a difficult crossing, but also a discovery of ourselves. The “Communicating Artistic Organisms”, as the artist Sergio Mario Illuminato calls them, curator of the project, exist in a constant state of transformation, embodying human vulnerability and the cyclical nature of death, life, and rebirth.

It is precisely mutation and decay that characterize the entirety of these works.

And finally, Rome. The project moves into its third chapter at the Historical Museum of Villa Altieri, completing a creative cycle.

After facing the most arduous challenge in Velletri, and exploring vulnerability in Paris in all its facets, we return to the primordial place of creation: the Atelier.

Here, art is no longer a simple representation, but a process, a daily practice of introspection and transformation.

And so, “iosonovulnerabile” comes to a close, but only temporarily. This project will in fact continue to evolve and grow, bringing with it new experiences and new reflections.

I believe that Rome, with its rich cultural heritage, the diversity of its influences, and its unique spaces in the world, is perfectly positioned to welcome and nurture these new artistic avant-gardes.

Pierluigi Sanna
Metropolitan City of Rome Capital

The Metropolitan City of Rome Capital, guardian of the most significant artistic innovations that enrich the cultural landscape of the Eternal City and its surrounding area, is pleased to host the performative practice “iosonovulnerabile” at the historic Villa Altieri Museum.

The ambitious project, marked by the success of the artist residency “Officina Alchemica delle Idee” at the former Pontifical Prison of Velletri, has reached a new dimension through the prestigious international presentation held at the Italian Cultural Institute in Paris.

“iosonovulnerabile” is a unique project of its kind and represents an innovative artistic experiment recognised as an excellence in Cultural Best Practices by the Lazio Region.

The project brings together a wide range of artistic expressions, from the avant-garde of Italian experimentation to the emerging voices of European academies.

Painting, sculpture, cinema, photography, music, theatre, publishing, and dance intertwine in the exploration of the universal theme of human vulnerability, integrating with social, community, and cultural projects that have long characterised the action of the Metropolitan City.

With the participation of prestigious institutions such as the Academy of Fine Arts of Rome and other higher education institutes, we reaffirm our commitment and support for a cultural and artistic practice that nurtures new generations, attentive to the fragilities of young people and oriented towards offering new opportunities for growth.

Art, in its multidisciplinary nature, becomes the privileged vehicle for conceiving and shaping a future of inclusion and hospitality.

The recognition of vulnerability, error, and failure as essential stages in the human journey allows us to regenerate spaces and communities, building a more cohesive and supportive social fabric.

The now three-year collaboration with “iosonovulnerabile” reinforces our ongoing commitment to building models of human and collective development that reflect the complexity and beauty of our existence.