“He laughed and told me that it was an imaginary animal, the asp or the basilisk, and that he knew of no animal like the one I was describing.”

Antonio Gramsci, Letters from Prison

Raffaela Naldi Rossano’s project stems from observing the collection of the future Museum of Natural Sciences in Belvì and from reading a text by Antonio Gramsci. The shared element is the Gongilo, a small reptile, a snake with short limbs, featuring in narratives midway between science and belief. In fact, according to popular tradition, it hides underground and turns into a monstrous winged creature. Because of its hybrid nature, the Gongilo takes on the role of emblem for the entire collection, which was created through scientific rigour and nurtured over time by donations, in the liminal zone between taxonomic selection and spontaneous accumulation. The snake, symbol of transformation or rebirth, is recurrent in various cultures and more specifically it is connected to the cult of the Mother Goddess, which has been deeply rooted in Sardinia since Neolithic times. The female principle becomes a central element of this artistic exploration as part of the mythological Janas, small magical creatures who inhabited the woods, skilled weavers and dancers, and of the Mother Goddess, a divinity connected to nature, birth and transformation. The artist constructs a narrative working on depiction and reality, describing a museum that exists in the imagination of the community but that has not yet taken shape, alive in a timeless condition. The imagined museum presents multiple visions through different media: the performance with the women of the village choir, ceramics in the form of the Gongilo, loom-woven textiles worn during the performance, the video, a container in which all the elements converge to transform taxonomic knowledge into a multiple, complex journey in which animals are presented, triggering, through the female element, new relationships between local legends and science. The Gongilo, a snake in metamorphosis, is the magical, transformative, hybrid element that links multiple temporalities, myth and natural reality. The performance symbolically reactivates ancestral knowledge and propitiates a new beginning for the community, strongly marked by increasing depopulation, starting with the regenerative feminine element.

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Exhibited work:

Raffaela Naldi Rossano, SERPENTINA. Per un mūsēum senza tempo, 2023. Loom fabric, ceramic, video. Variable dimensions.
Stazione di Belvì – Aritzo, Belvì.
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Raffaela Naldi Rossano (Naples, 1990) lives and works between Naples and Athens; she graduated in 2016 from Goldsmiths College, London. Her latest film WARP, 2022, part of the research Partenope, was presented at LIAF - Lofoten International Art Festival (NO, 2022), curated by Francesco Urbano Ragazzi, and at Cinema Galleggiante in Venice, curated by TBA21 Academy and Barbara Casavecchia. In 2020 she participated in the Quadriennale in Rome and recent solo exhibitions include: Undomesticated Voices, double solo show with Lara Damaso, Istituto Svizzero, Milan (IT, 2022); How She Spins, Damien and the Love Guru, Brussels (BE, 2022); I Confess, curated by Chus Martinez, der TANK, Basel (CH, 2019); Partenope, Aetopoulos, Athens (GR, 2019). Group exhibitions included: Spettri, Madre, Naples (IT, 2022); Utopia Distopia: il mito del progresso partendo dal Sud, Madre, Naples (IT, 2021); There is no time to enjoy the sun, Fondazione Morra Greco, Naples (IT, 2021); Onde tra noi, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Guarene (IT, 2020);Fare Deculturalizzazione, Museion, Bolzano (IT, 2019); Che i ponti brucino, Manifesta, Palermo (IT, 2018).