Adrian Paci: U’ncuontru

Laveronica Arte contemporanea is proud to announce the staging of U ‘ncuontru by the Albanian artist Adrian Paci. The event took place in Modica in the hours before dawn on April 4, Easter Sunday 2021, along a path that silently crossed the streets of the city and came to an end near St Peter’s Church.

The action was inspired by the famous religious ritual of the “Madonna vasa vasa”, which takes place on Easter Sunday and has always been attended by thousands of people, thronging along the city’s main street. 

Every year, on Easter Sunday at precisely midday, statues of the risen Christ and the Virgin Mary, dressed in mourning attire, finally meet in Piazza Monumento, where the traditional vasata takes place and in which the statue of the Madonna, on seeing the statue of the risen Christ, sheds her black cloak as a sign of joy and begins to spread her arms, simulating the gesture of an embrace and then of a kiss.

The artist had participated several times in Modica’s Easter rituals in the past and was enchanted by the human participation, the festive atmosphere, the gestures and the rhythm of the procession.

In this pandemic era, all this is not possible, but Paci imagined a nocturnal and clandestine meeting all the same. A meeting far from the lights and enthusiasm of the crowd. A silent and intimate encounter between a mother and a son, between a woman veiled in black who removes her cloak and embraces her risen son, regardless of the applause, the noise and the music. For Paci, stripping away ritual to achieve an element of essentiality also means investigating a zone of need that goes beyond habits and inertia. His work often investigates that territory that resists transformation and continues to assert itself despite changes. The intertwining of the simulacrum and truth, of narrative and real-life experience is another central element in Paci’s work that returns strongly in this latest project. Through symbolic elements, Paci’s intervention explores the dynamics of a complex and stratified reality, in search of new connections and new possible openings. 

The only people taking part in the event were as few members of the association of statue bearers Santa Maria di Betlem, who have always been linked to this ritual by their religious faith and their popular and human passion, and who for one night also lived in intimacy and symbiosis with the statues.

From April 6 to July 31, a solo exhibition by Adrian Paci entitled The Encounter will be on display in the gallery. The show will feature the video and a series of photos taken from the famous performance of the same name that took place in Scicli in 2011, also the upshot of collaboration between the gallery and the great Albanian artist, and of which U ‘ncuontru, ten years on, represents an ideal development.