CARLO LA MONICA
Il modello della città vecchia
Carlo La Monica, an artist and craftsman born in Gibellina in 1947, witnessed first hand the project for its reconstruction. La Monica first worked as a technician for the Orestiadi di Gibellina theatre festival, helping to create sets for productions by Toti Scialoja, Pietro Consagra, Nunzio, Arnaldo Pomodoro, and Mimmo Paladino. In more recent years he has been working as an artist, with the relationship between the individual and memory at the center of his artistic research.
His work is a large model of old Gibellina based on old photos and architectural plans, a way to pass on knowledge to the new generations who never saw it. The images, purified of any non-architectural elements, act as a starting point from which to restore three-dimensionality and volume to the town’s spaces: public and private buildings, squares and streets. The recreation of these single spaces – almost perfectly aligned along a hypothetical layout – has allowed for the reconstruction of all the old town’s neighbourhoods, in volumes and elevations, like the putting together of many fragmented sentences to make a text. The photos used were almost always of families, but have been cleaned of human presence and corrected through alterations in perspective, shaped to record the urban layout as objectively as possible. Architecture without people.
La Monica’s model preserves the memory of those who lived in the old city, saving it from dimming over time. For those who were not there to see old Gibellina, it testifies to the harmony of the urban landscape and what the earthquake irreparably destroyed.
As Gibellina’s mayor Ludovico Corrao wrote “… you can move anywhere and any place can be your land if you bring with you veneration for your dead and the love you’ve created… and we would add…. the places you’ve loved.”
La Monica’s work is a gift to the people of Gibellina, wherever they may be.
Text by Enzo Fiammetta
BIO
Carlo La Monica was born in Gibellina in 1947 and graduated from the Art Institute of Mazara del Vallo with a dissertation on copper engraving. As an iron craftsman, he began working on machinery for the staging of productions for the Orestiadi di Gibellina festival, in collaboration with Gino Ippolito. These productions included Toti Scialoja, The Rape of Proserpine, G. De Ponticelli, 1986; Francis Poirier, Oresteia, by Xenakis, 1987; Pietro Consagra, Oedipus Rex, M. Martone, 1988; Nunzio, Trojan Women, T. Salmon, 1988; Arnaldo Pomodoro, The Passion of Cleopatra, Cherif, 1989; Mimmo Paladino, The Bride of Messina, E. De Capitani, 1990. His years of experience and encounters with the great masters of art guide him in the search for his own artistic language, where the relationship between memory and art takes on particular connotations. He was awarded in the sculpture section by the Accademia Medicea in Florence. His works are in private collections and Italian and foreign galleries: Freddy Langer Gallery in Frankfurt; Museum of Contemporary Art in Castelvetrano; Museum of Contemporary Art and Orestiadi Foundation in Gibellina.
He has been the subject of writing by Albano Rossi, Enrico Stassi, Enzo Minio, Francesco Carbone, Giovanni Cappuzzo, Giacomo Bonagiuso, Aurelio Pes, Fulvio Abbate, Achille Bonito Oliva.