Mara Scampoli

Moonscape/Artscape

Two realities very distant in space but united by the same desire for recovery, through art, of the environment wounded by disastrous events: Gibellina and Naoshima. Gibellina, located on the hills in the province of Palermo, Italy, was completely destroyed by the 1968 earthquake and rebuilt a few kilometers downstream. Some of the greatest artists of the time contributed to the reconstruction project by intervening on public spaces and giving life to one of the largest en plein air museums in the world. The great Cretto, a majestic work of land art by Burri, covers the ruins of the old city like a shroud of concrete, retracing its streets and alleys. Naoshima is the most famous of the islands in the archipelago of the Seto Sea, in Japan, tiny islands that came to the fore in the 1970s for having been the site of toxic waste spills. The islands subsequently underwent a process of profound regeneration and acquired the current identity of an artistic site that hosts site-specific works and museums, created by numerous internationally renowned artists and architects, creating a constant dialogue between art, nature and population.