Barocco & Neobarocco (Baroque & Neo-Baroque) is an original festival: first of all because of the setting in which it takes place, Ragusa Ibla, in Sicily, a place rich in charm and history. As original is the theme of the event, the search for the theatrical spirit in contemporary creativity.
Curator and organizer is the architect Roberto Semprini, director of the course in Artistic Design for the Enterprise (School of Design and Applied Arts, Brera Academy of Fine Arts) with the support of Cristina Morozzi, journalist and design critic.
From May 31 to June 2, streets, palaces, and deconsacrated churches will welcome the projects and ideas of young students and professional designers in a multi-voiced dialogue outside the box. Nigel Coates, Professor Emeritus of the Department of Architecture at the Royal College of Arts, London, will present Echo and Narcissus, a family of limited-edition furniture and lamps; Semprini, artistic director of the festival, will present a series of products inspired by Baroque aesthetics: mirrors, plates, small tables. The young fashion designer Alessandro Enriquez, originally from Palermo, will present his latest collection in the former church of San Vincenzo Ferreri (in Ibla), while the artist and designer Sara Ricciardi brings her installation Under the Willow Tree to the Castle of Donnafugata.
A lot of space will also be given to young people: in addition to students from the Academies of Fine Arts of Brera (Milan), Catania and Timișoara (Romania) and the University of Campania Luigi Vanvitelli, DADI department Fashion Alive project, there will be talents selected by the High School of Art of Ragusa.
The three days will also be an opportunity for meetings and conferences: among the speakers will be Gilda Bojardi, editor in chief of the magazine Interni, and the journalists Cristina Morozzi and Patrizia Piccinini. At the end of the program, on the evening of June 2nd, in the Castle of Donnafugata, the philologist and literary critic Salvatore Silvano Nigro, together with Gianni Canova, Dean of the IULM in Milan, will present the book Il Principe fulvo (‘The tawny prince’), an erudite and entertaining essay on the writer Giovanni Tomasi di Lampedusa.
