PANORAMA - L'AQUILA: a city-wide exhibition curated by Cristiana Perrella

We are thrilled to participate in the new edition of PANORAMA, the special account that ITALICS periodically dedicates to some of the most extraordinary locations in the Italian landscape.

After the editions of Procida (2021) and Monopoli (2022), both curated by Vincenzo De Bellis, ITALICS chose L’Aquila for the third edition of Panorama and invited Cristiana Perrella – curator and art critic – to conceive a multi-site exhibition for the Abruzzo capital.

L’Aquila was founded on the slopes of Gran Sasso in 1254 and rebuilt in 1266 by Charles I of Anjou. It was initially part of the Kingdom of Naples, then of the Hapsburg kingdom and then the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. In its long history, it has known moments of power and splendor alternated with phases of decline, destruction, reconstruction and rebirth, related to the violent earthquakes that have struck it throughout its history, including the particularly dramatic one of 2009.

The focus in the new edition of Panorama, curated by Cristiana Perrella, will be on L’Aquila’s vast historical heritage in part still damaged by the last earthquake and in part rebuilt and restored to their original splendor.

The venues of Panorama L’Aquila will not be simple “containers” of works but generators of content per se, making the multi-site exhibition unique, and benefiting from the fertile relationship with the cultural fabric of the city and its long tradition.

The exhibition project by Cristiana Perrella for Panorama L’Aquila grew from the suggestion of the evocative term wit(h)nessing, coined by feminist theorist, artist and psychoanalyst Bracha Ettinger with the aim of extending the concept of witnessing, understood both as an affirmation of one’s knowledge and as passing on a story.

UNVEILING OUR PROJECT FOR PANORAMA