Associazione Gibellina Parco Culturale
Il Cretto è casa mia (The Cretto is my home), 2024 –ongoing
A project by Nicolò Stabile
34 photographs by Giuseppe Ippolito
Digital photography, dimensions variable
Thoughts of the survivors of 1968 Belice earthquake collected and chosen by Giovanna Giordano
Courtesy Giuseppe Ippolito (Photos) and Giovanna Giordano (Text)
Il Cretto è casa mia (The Cretto is my home) is be shown publicly for the first time at the Frankfurter Kunstverein. The photographic work was brought to life in 2024 by the tenacious determination of Nicolò Stabile, who initiated it as part of his tireless work to preserve Alberto Burri’s Cretto and the history of Gibellina.
On display are portraits of people who survived the Belice earthquake, which shook and destroyed western Sicily several times in 1968. They are the last witnesses to this traumatic experience. The people affected lost relatives and their homes. The earthquake and the inaction of the authorities left them homeless and alone with the loss of their entire existence. After years in temporary barracks, Gibellina Nuova (the new Gibellina) was built 18 kilometres away. Artists and architects donated works and it became a city of a modernist utopia, which over the years was once again abandoned to decay.
In 2024, the participatory project Il Cretto è casa mia was created as an attempt to heal and reappropriate a place that, in its entire presence, bears witness to a deeply felt absence. More than fifty years after the earthquake, people have come together to have their portraits made, as they stand in front of the former ruins of their homes. In the 1980s, Alberto Burri’s landscape artwork, the Cretto di Gibellina, was created on these remains as a place of silence and remembrance. The artist succeeded in transforming the pain into a form of sublime beauty through a respectful creative act. His white layers of concrete shrouded the remains, like a burial shroud, preserving them in the secrecy of their interior.
Nicolò Stabile, himself a survivor and founder of the Associazione Gibellina Parco Culturale, is the driving force behind a visionary and monumental endeavour not to abandon this place to decay, but to preserve it and mobilise collective forces to do so. For years, he has been committed to preserving the art and the memorial site. In 2024, he invited the photographer Giuseppe Ippolito to take portraits of the survivors on site. The photo campaign, conceived as an ongoing process, now comprises 60 portraits, 34 of which are printed and shown for the first time as part of the group exhibition The Presence of Absence. The people whose faces we see belong to the last generation to bear witness to this shattering event for Sicily and the whole of Italy.
They look at us from the photographs and do not shrink back from the violence of history, but emerge as individuals. They tell their stories to the writer Giovanna Giordano, excerpts of which can be read in the exhibition. They are proud that Alberto Burri created one of the world’s most important monuments and his masterpiece from the ruins of their houses. A living place of landscape, memory and culture.
Nicolò Stabile (b. 1966, Gibellina, IT) worked in the 1980s alongside Ludovico Corrao (*1927, Alcamo, IT; †2011, Gibellina, IT), the former mayor of Gibellina, on the reconstruction of the city after the 1968 Belice earthquake. In the 1990s, he lived and worked in Brussels, BE, where he worked as a playwrighter, organiser, press spokesperson, and translator for various theaters, festivals, and artists, including Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Brussels (BE), Kaaitheater, Brussels (BE), CharleroiDanses, Charleroi (BE), and Needcompany, Brussels (BE). He also worked as a producer for Thierry Salmon. In 2000, Stabile returned to Gibellina, where he led the Compagnia Caterina Sagna and realised numerous co-productions with prominent institutions such as Théâtre de la Ville, Paris (FR), Théâtre de la Bastille, Paris (FR), Festival d’Avignon (FR), and Venice Biennale (IT). From 2006 to 2010, he was responsible for public relations and the Ente Promozione Danza at Fondazione Romaeuropa, Rome (IT), as well as for the programming at Teatro Palladium, Rome (IT). Since 2010, Stabile has been dedicated to preserving and documenting the public art collection of Gibellina, particularly Alberto Burri’s Cretto. In this context, he has collaborated with artists, photographers, directors, researchers, dramaturgs, archives, universities, and institutions to document the city of Gibellina and its contradictions. Collaborators include Thierry de Mey, Marzia Migliora, Petra Noordkamp, Elisa Giardina Papa, Onorato & Krebs, David Williams, Maya Bosch, Christian Lutz, Pablo Fidalgo, Alexander Rosenkranz, Istituto Svizzero, Rome (IT), Accademia Tedesca Villa Massimo, Rome (IT), Fondazione Sandretto Re Baudengo, Turin (IT), and Archivio Pietro Consagra, Gibellina (IT).
Giuseppe Ippolito (b. 1987, Novara, IT) is an Italian photographer specializing in portrait and reportage photography for the publishing and advertising industries. His reportage work has been published in both national and international outlets, including The Guardian, Vanity Fair, La Cucina Italiana, Business Traveller UK, The Creative Brothers, Athleta Magazine, Suq Magazine, and Trentino Magazine. Ippolito is well-known in the food and beverage industry as a photographer of celebrity chefs, and he has collaborated with La Repubblica, Panorama, Dispensa Magazine, and Fine Dining Lovers by San Pellegrino. In 2017, he received a special mention from the World Photography Organization and was shortlisted for the Food Photographer of the Year award. Recently, he expanded his work to include the creation of institutional campaigns for Regione Sicilia, SIAE (Italian Society of Authors and Publishers), and MiBAC (Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities). Ippolito’s parents are from Gibellina.
Giovanna Giordano (b. 1961, Milan, IT) lives and works in Catania, IT, where she teaches philosophy at the Accademia di Belle Arti and works as a journalist and author. Giordano is known for her literary journeys from Sicily to other places beyond Italy. She studied African art history and regularly writes for publications such as La Stampa, Il Giornale di Sicilia, Il Mattino, and currently La Sicilia. She has received numerous awards, including the Premio Recalmare Sciascia for her novels, such as Trentaseimila giorni (1996), Un volo magico (1998), and Il mistero di Lithian (2004). In 2020, she was shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Her work Il profumo della libertà (2021) was nominated for the Premio Strega in 2022.
