Protect the Palm Trees from the Parasites

Mural for Visione Periferica Festival
Mosciano Sant’Angelo, Abbruzzo, Italy

Resilience to Climate Change
Resilience to Palm Trees Parasites
Resilience to maintain Freedom

“Resisting adversity is a matter of training”
Alessandro Morandotti, Minime, 1979/80

“Andreco is a Roman artist with a solid scientific background and, in his works (murals, installations, performances), he deeply immerses himself in the local reality and in the everyday fabric, in the geological and environmental aspect in which he acts.
The work that Andreco painted for Peripheral Vision is part of this reflective approach, inserted in his ideal path of “Nature as Art”, of absorption and conceptual investigations on the territory.
Starting from the colors allowed in the strip of the historic city center, the artist has broken down the color palette into its characteristic rocks, as if to bring the buildings back to the primary material, to the quarry, to extraction. The heap of minerals he made is surmounted by a palm-leaf stylus. A ritual stick that wants to be a protective, spiritual presence for the palms. These trees, particularly in the Abruzzo area, are plagued by the parasite “Red Weevil”, known for its dangerousness and tenacity. The symbolic palm keeps watch, opposes this plague like a tribal and magical scepter. Andreco also inserted a broken and camouflaged word: a puzzle, to be deciphered as if it were an alchemical formula distributed over the width of the wall. This word is closely linked to the presence of Mussolini’s wall portraits which were painted on the occasion of a visit by the Duce to Mosciano in the Twenties. The wall painted for the Festival is close to the remains of these images of propaganda and the cult of personality, and this was a further suggestion for the artist. Always close to the partisan memory, Andreco wanted to give a strong and current meta-meaning, to remember those who fought yesterday and those who fight for freedom and resist today. ”
Text by Antonella Perazza
Photos: Camilla Cionfrini, Leonardo Giustini, Elia Tomat, Mirko

Dettaglio

wall painting

Anno

2015

Location

Visione Periferica Festival – Mosciano Sant’Angelo