Apolide installation by Oppy de Bernardo (Locarno, Swiss)

My article about Apolide by Oppy De Bernardo is published on S Magazine. I've visited Locarno just for this installation, it was really worthy to remind our global immigration situation.

The press release of the event is under.

Oppy De Bernardo

Apolide

City of Locarno

Piazza Grande

March 31 – April 15, 2018

Locarno, March 31, 2018 – 6500 plastic lifebuoys of every shape and colour are completely covering the 3500 m² of Piazza Grande in Locarno. This imposing and ambitious installation called Apolide designed by the Ticino-born artist Oppy De Bernardo (Locarno, 1970) under the patronage of the city of Locarno will be revealed on the night of the March 30-31 with the help of more than 120 people and 18 km of rope.

Apolide will be open to the public from March 31 to April 15 and locals, kids, schoolchildren and the general public are all invited to come and take as many lifebuoys as they want from Piazza Grande from 11th April onwards.

Oppy De Barnardo - an artist who has always been interested in studying communication processes and the perceptual boundaries of ordinary reality - is making a bold and very distinctive attempt to showcase in an abstract and theatrical way what is perhaps one of the biggest emergencies of our times: global migration. This empathetic gesture is fun, even manages to create a kind of euphoria, and certainly deserves credit for encouraging debate on statelessness from the unusual and privileged viewpoint of art.

Statelessness can have many different connotations depending on the context in which it is set: from the idea of being a “citizen of the world” in ancient Rome and Erasmus of Amsterdam’s conscious decision to be independent from the ruling forces to the condition in which many migrants now find themselves in, “sans papiers”  from nations that are not recognised by the States occupying the land in which they live and who find themselves with no rights, including the fundamental right of having their existence acknowledged. Often referred to rather dismissively using the euphemism displaced people - which, as Hannah Arendt complained, simplifies and trivialises a highly complex situation - it is obviously difficult not to get bogged down in elaborate and inconclusive philosophical analyses when attempting to come up with some legal definition for the term “statelessness” that excludes the alienating and destructive status of invisibility.

Oppy De Bernardo - without trying to solve such a complex issue to one single artistic gesture - is showcasing this condition in a strikingly theatrical and intangible way. Piazza Grande in Lucerne, the heart of the city with its majestic porticos designed in the Lombard style that used to be lapped by the waters of Lake Maggiore, is being transformed into a gigantic “utopian” island where we can be saved from ourselves, an island where human beings can be saved from other human beings, where there are no more borders, ethnic groups, races, colours and distinctions. An island that does not exist, surreal and happy.

The entire square is being covered by a rubbery surface, a colourful people-friendly expanse, a lively setting for walking around and meeting people: a solidified sea that is soft and unreal, projecting us prematurely into a cliched holiday atmosphere. A perfect world of consumer objects that are exciting to look at and leave no room for the imagination, an event which will radically change how public space is used for two weeks and will affect an entire community, whether they like it or not.

These are the assumptions, considerations and thoughts on which De Bernardo has developed this urban-scale project for the whole of Lucerne city square: a theatrical and also playful gesture in striking contrast with the feeling of alienation and disorientation associated with the lack of any definite bearings or reference points.

Oppy De Bernardo (Locarno 1970). After studying Restoration and Painting at Como Academy, he moved to Milan where he enrolled on Alberto Garutti’s course at Brera Fine Arts Academy. In 2008 he was one of the artist chosen by the Antonio Ratti Foundation in Como to take a postgraduate course in the Visual Arts and in the same year he also won the Epson FAR Prize at the ‘Fabbrica del Vapore’ in Milan. In 2009 he was one of the artists involved in the R.o.R. Artist in Residence Program in Sempas, Slovenia (SLO).