Art by Alice Valenti

– by Alice Valenti, Artista, painter and sicilian carts decorator

Street Art has spread widely in Catania in recent decades.

An extremely interesting tool for discovering the complex physiognomy of a city that seems to continually die and rise from its ashes, as the famous inscription at the top of Porta Ferdinandea states.

But here I don’t mean to refer to the eruptions and earthquakes suffered by the city over the centuries, but to the troubled and fascinating process of life / death, destruction / rebirth, decay / beauty that tirelessly perpetuates itself and of which urban art becomes aware. hero.

The itinerary that I propose to you is therefore not simply linked to the beauty of the works themselves (this is the reason for the inevitable omissions, the discovery of which I leave to chance and to the skill of the travelers), but is intimately linked to the significance of the places, to the will to raise awareness on the theme of the use of spaces and city management, to the corollary of reflections and short circuits that art can trigger in the observer.

Piazza dei Libri

In the historic center, next to the Ursino Castle, a small square for decades abandoned to decay and reduced to a parking lot, in 2003 it was adopted and returned to the city by the Gammazita Association, which makes it an open-air library: a place where art, culture, sociability and sharing are the protagonists.

In 2016, the artistic duo Rosk & Loste gave the city the giant face of an activist from Gammazita, Florinda. Lorenzo Ciulla’s animals, on the other hand, overlook a luxuriant flower bed in the street.

Via San Michele

When unity is strength. The synergy between the inhabitants, entrepreneurs and cultural promoters of this small street behind Via Etnea has given rise to a redevelopment project sealed by the work of Demetrio Di Grado with his analogue collages contaminated by sprays.

San Berillo

I tell you, but I didn’t tell you. Because this is a place where beauty goes hand in hand with fragility, and it is necessary to enter on tiptoe. The San Berillo neighborhood is an urban jewel that survived the building and speculative demolition of the 1970s (the question is: how long will it resist the next gentrification attack?). A neighborhood where stories of marginalization, activism, multiculturalism coexist, whose contradictions in 2016 are highlighted by a social and artistic project called RED LINE DISTREET, which floods the alleys and walled doors with art, triggering a process still in progress. Wonder, Xanta Pece, Luprete, Ligama, Valentina/Julia, El Duff, GAB_el, INDA.Street , Gost, Weds, Rage, Nemo’s, Cristina Scalia, Alice Valenti, Giorgio Corriera, Riccardo Longhitano, Nicolo’ Amato, Fabrizio Nicolosi Pitto, Divina Pirrone, Spanky, Uta Dag e Axolotreet, Riccardo Longhitano, DokRuin, Dero, Baco, Double, Gore, Poki, I mangiatori di patate, CollettivoFX, Daniele Melarancio, ArtiFarti, Sin Metro, Antonio Anc, El Duff, Fodds, Ruce, Pilo, JulietaXLF, Rosaria Costa, Giuliana Mannino, Clasto, Alice Caldarella e Mr Eye’, Sten Lex, Guè.