Mention the word "sea" and we will all conjure up different images and visions in our minds: those of us in another Coronavirus lockdown will start longing for the freedom of the sea and of marine adventures under a warm sun; others, fashion designers included, will picture in their minds fascinating aquatic environments populated with inspiring beautiful, mysterious and fragile creatures; climate change researchers will instead focus on the ongoing rise in global sea levels, while for thousands of migrants who cross it, the sea is a vaste expanse of water that will hopefully lead to a happier and safer life.
The sea is also the protagonist of a project by visual artist Gea Casolaro entitled "Mare Magnum Nostrum". Casolaro is interested in the relationship between history and current events and this project, rather than just a photographic exhibition, is a dialogue told by multiple voices, a collective effort to chronicle life on the Mediterranean Sea, representing the pulsating heart of many civilisations.
The participatory exhibition linked to the project kicks off tomorrow in the South-Eastern Tower of Diocletian's Palace in Split, Croatia (through 26th November 2020). Here an immersive installation, created in collaboration with a group of students of the Academy of Fine Arts in Split and Fotoklub Split, pays homage to the Mediterranean through a series of photographs collected by Casolaro and chronicling the history of the Mediterranean Sea and of its coasts.
Some of the most poetic images are the ones in black and white or in sepia tinted tones and the pictures that fill our hearts with a deep sense of calmness: there's a grandmother lulling a sleeping child on a beach in Mondello in 1938; a woman on a boat in Viserba di Rimini in 1953 and a lonely fisherman on a rock on the Island of Milos in 2008.
The images - taken in Italy, Croatia, Greece and Instanbul - tell stories of holidays, solitary adventures, religious ceremonies near the sea and quiet moments of reflection on a jetty, while an architectural shot of a ferry boat traces a perfect geometric composition with yellow plastic chairs, a neon light and the metallic structure of the ferry in the background forming an eye-pleasing juxtaposition of lines.
The images show us the Mediterranean Sea and its coasts as places where you can relax and have fun, but they also point at the multiple energies operating along the coast, with fishermen working and a beach cleaning volunteer revealing to the camera gloved hands holding plastic straws found on the sand.
The project will develop in the next few months: at the moment Casolaro has indeed launched a collective photographic archive that will keep on growing as the months pass.
Photographers - both professional and amateurs - will be able to upload on the Mare Magnum Nostrum website their pictures portraying the mighty Mediterranean and its coasts (through themes such as holidays, landscapes, news, rituals, arrivals and departures, to mention just a few) in the dedicated section of the website, indicating the place and year in which the photo was taken, adding an emotion or a thought connected to these pictures.
The photographs will be collected and published on the Mare Magnum Nostrum website (that will constantly be updated and will also be connected with a Facebook and Instagram page), but they will also be printed and employed in future installations to form a mosaic of lives lived on the coast. The digital archive, based on this public database, will allow to trace the transformations of the depicted areas and their different identities from the photographers' point of view.
The final stage of the project - a final collective exhibition scheduled for next spring - will take place at the National Museum of Ravenna, the city that represented a bridge between two sides of the Mediterranean, its western and eastern soul.
Apart from focusing on the sea, pulsating with energy and life, this event celebrates people coming from different social and cultural backgrounds inviting them to come together in an itinerant participatory project that will allow participants and visitors to the site to travel coast to coast and sail around the Mediterranean even in lockdown.
Image credits for this post
All images in this post are part of the event Mare Magnum Nostrum, 2020-2021, by Gea Casolaro.
1. Portovenere, 28th July 1957 © Archivio Albano
2. Mondello, 11th September 1938 © Archivio Albano
3. Viserba di Rimini, August 1953 © Archivio Albano
4. On a ferry from Naples to Palermo, 6th July 1961 © Gennaro Casolaro
5. Island of Milos, 12th September 2008 © Fulvio Naglieri
6. Brindisi, 2009 © Terasia Panagrosso
7. On the ferry from Hvar to Split, 2020 © Tina Božan
8. Udruga Sunce Split, Sakarun Beach, Dugi Otok 2020 © Fedra Dokoza
9. Istanbul Harbour, 2012 © Terasia Panagrosso
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