Futura Traditio

The artwork comes from a contamination between my artistic imagination and the articulated world told to me by the artisans of my city. The theme is that of the complex relationship between tradition and innovation, non-antithetical concepts to be thought of in necessary coexistence, re-evaluating what we often consider otherness. The fruition of the work, in a marked 320 m2 anamorphosis, presupposes the search for a different, unusual, unexpected point of view.
The title is a sort of oxymoron that combines the concept of tradition (handed down) with the idea of the future as a part of time that has not taken place and is therefore unknowable. We therefore speak of a Tradition understood as in the philosophical sphere, dynamic and active over the generations.
Two characters who represent tradition and innovation, with different skills and resources, deliberately very diversified by age. The elderly man in work clothes represents the craftsman as per collective imagination, the workshop master who hands down ancient knowledge, manual skills, technical ability. The young woman wearing a futuristic headdress with visor and headphones symbolizes 4.0 craftsmanship, born from the technologies of the fourth industrial revolution. Her hands hold a box from which tools related to the artisan world come out. Both look at the observer, recall him from the street, the girl is direct, self-confident, the man is thoughtful.
The transmission of knowledge is perceived in the passage of the box. The young woman has received it and turns to hand it to the artisans of the future, represented in black silhouettes in the light coming from one of the virtual windows. They appear almost evanescent but their role is not yet known, an open point remains. In my opinion we will return to manual skills, to the single piece, but it is not known.
A swarm of white figures can then be seen above the upper right window (the real window of the building) and also on its ideal (fictitious) continuation on the left, until you reach the metaphorical 'house' that connects the stick to the ' A 'of the luminous writing. They are the shadows (luminous as signifiers) of the workers of the past.
The house placed like a lantern on the top of the stick refers to the iconography of the pilgrim, replacing the shell and the emptied pumpkin with the idea of a safe place, of welcome, of dialogue. It is held by the workshop master, custodian of tradition and the spread of techniques throughout the world.
The mural was to be completed in the spring of 2020. Then the project was postponed for the reasons we all know. I therefore reflected on how to touch the Covid19 theme without making the piece dramatic, which is not easy on an iconographic level. A mask and a pair of crumpled gloves emerge from the toolbox. We have overcome the most acute phase of the pandemic also through solidarity works and therefore these elements are supplied in the knowledge kit. However, they are not fully inserted into the box, they hang from a hammer. I deliberately didn't nail them to the wall. The hammer is available to do this but we know that the risk is always present and that perhaps this bad experience is not closed (or that it could repeat itself, in other forms).
On a symbolic level, I therefore wanted to play with perspective again. In fact, if the theme of the pandemic is only evoked by photographing the work from the correct point of view, it becomes more and more significant as you approach the right side of the painting, where you realize how the space occupied by the mask and gloves is very large. Hope therefore, but also a warning to caution