From Palestine with Love

In 2022 Borgo Universo has been able to forge new relationships with the rest of the world, in particular by meeting the Palestinian Embassy and the University of Bethlehem, with which a festival of integration between peoples has been created: Borgo Universo for Palestine. During this busy and stimulating moment, the people of Aiella had the great pleasure of hosting the Palestinian artist Taqi Spateen in the "spiazzetta", a welcoming, warm, convivial place where the community gathers and meets. Once again the urban space, invaded by art, has crucified people, and the wall, beyond the work, has generated an experience around itself. Discovering a universal language that goes beyond every sea and every desert, every wall of concrete or words, every physical or mental distance, people different by language by history and culture, but close to their own humanity, told themselves and offered themselves to the gaze of the other, welcoming themselves.

Taqi's work, clear in its brutality, tells us with a strong emotional impact the condition of precariousness and oppression that the Palestinian people live. Through the torn wall we witness the scene of an interrupted wedding: the furnishings of the house that made the place a domestic hearth ready to welcome the dream of a new family leave room to the void. Only the red sofa is enthroned at the centre of the scene, but the bride is alone, far from her partner who in precarious balance is waiting to act on the balcony next door. The bride is alone, but not abandoned, not completely defeated. His arms fall between his legs, but his torso is straight and imposing like that of a queen. The face does not squirm in a upset pain. It is, as if in an eternal moment of emptiness, like silence before an explosion. There is almost a smile, hidden in the corner of the lip, which betrays a sleep force, a courage guarded in the chest, an energy that is about to manifest itself. There is a strength of mind that, like Taqi's, pushes her to fight again and again. So are all the fighters of life, alone but not abandoned. Each with his struggle also fights those of the others, and even if far away they embrace each other above adversity, like the trees of a forest that speak in the darkness of the ground, caressing themselves with their roots, because the story is always the same, and the cafoni are the same all over the world: no longer alone, but in good company. So we like to think that this lonely bride can hear through the destroyed wall the voices and birds with their songs all around, that maybe even the scent of flowers reaches her in her husband's hand, that she can feel less alone in the middle of this slow and airy life of our country, with Anna and Gina, the coffee and little Nina playing around them, growing up in the meantime.

Taqi taught us with his crystalline wisdom and with his constant wonder, attentive and curious like a child, to give importance to precious little things and to fight for them, honouring life by living it to the best of its possibilities. Aielli, for his part, was able to offer his Palestine a place of freedom, an outstretched hand, a smile, a coffee. And a wall to paint on in peace.( cit. Borgouniverso.com)