Strongly characterised by interdisciplinary works that blend visual and performing art, installations, videos and new technology, the work of Italian artist Pietro Marullo, based in Brussels, often focuses on social, historical and anthropological themes.
This also applies to the appointment at Oriente Occidente, where Marullo returns with three works looking at the Mediterranean: ARANCE - avoid shooting blacks, HERMANDAD and Gaia Empathy #1 JORDAN.
The poetic element connecting the three projects is water. ARANCE - avoid shooting blacks is a performance that invites us to reflect on the migrants’ journeys across the Mare Nostrum to reach Europe, which often turns out to be a land of violence and indifference, despite the indissoluble bond between our continent and Africa.
HERMANDAD, on the other hand, mixes dance, visual art and sound, creating an aesthetic experience around the themes of brotherhood and sisterhood, on a journey through different rituals involving water as the primordial element of the development of life and of communities.
Finally, in JORDAN, a video work which is the first chapter of the Gaia Empathy project, the protagonist is the scarcity of water: an absence that increasingly forces people to migrate.
The audience (...) comes to the edge of a large stage, which is empty at the start and which progressively fills with an impressive sound decoration and a spectacular evocation of the new favelas on the outskirts of Europe. No logorrhoea, the show is practically silent, only rustling with the noise of the world and of the migrant’s thoughts, which can also be read on a screen. The plastic beauty of the performance is undeniable, the ideas often brilliant and the symbolism often magnificent.
