JACOPO DI CERA
Between
Curated by Arianna Catania
Alberto Burri’s Great Cretto is a work conceived to preserve trauma: a vast white surface in which the memory of old Gibellina has become matter, silence, and definitive form. With Between, Di Cera introduces a different time into this monumentality: not the time of History, but the essential, fragile and continuous time of everyday life. The six-screen video installation stems from a filming session carried out at the Cretto, involving inhabitants of Gibellina from different generations and staging minimal, simple gestures: elderly people playing cards, a woman carrying her shopping, a little girl riding a bicycle, a couple hanging out the laundry, children playing football. Ordinary, intimate, familiar actions that could belong to any place, and that open an unexpected threshold within the monument. Filmed from above and presented in a loop, the scenes transform the Cretto into a constellation of small stages. The figures also appear through their shadows: suspended presences capable of suggesting different identities. In this gap between body and shadow, between matter and digital image, life flows slowly, accompanied by the sound of the wind. Each screen is a window suspended between past and present: yet the life symbolically brought back into Burri’s work does not erase the wound, nor does it seek to recompose the past, but rather brings forth simple forms of life that concern us all. Between is therefore an intermediate space between what has been lost and what continues to happen, between the weight of memory and the lightness of ordinary gestures. In this way, the Cretto does not become a mere setting, but an inhabitable place in which the life that once flowed slowly through old Gibellina re-emerges, leaving open the possibility that any place may once again be crossed, inhabited and imagined.
BIO
Jacopo Di Cera (Milan, 1981) is a visual artist based in Rome. In 2010, he was among the winners of the National Geographic competition. In 2016, he created Fino alla fine del mare (To the End of the Sea), a project addressing the theme of migration and the boats off the coast of Lampedusa, which was exhibited in museums, galleries and international fairs, including Paris Photo, PAN in Naples, MIA Photo Fair and Les Rencontres d’Arles. In 2017, he exhibited during the Venice Biennale and was hosted on Edipo Re, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s boat, at the Arsenale. He developed Il rumore dell’assenza, dedicated to the Amatrice earthquake, and MiRo – Milano-Roma, a project carried out over eight years through the same train window. Since 2017, he has been experimenting with the use of drones through Sospesi. In 2020, he began exploring digital art with Infinity. In 2024, he was selected by the Italian Consulate in Dubai for the Dubai Art Fair; in 2025, the fair commissioned him to create Retreat, an installation on climate change. That same year, he was among the artists selected for Milano-Cortina with White Entropy at Malpensa. In 2026, he presents Shapes at Palazzo Regione Lombardia and was featured as a leading artist at the Mare d’Arte Festival in Milano Marittima. In 2026, he takes part in the 61st Venice Biennale of Contemporary Art in the Sierra Leone Pavilion.
In collaboration with HF4 Communication