Sorrento SyArt Festival

The SyArt Sorrento Festival, an international event dedicated to contemporary art, from Oct. 8 to Nov. 30 is hosted at Villa Fiorentino, home of the Sorrento Foundation. The organizers Mr. and Mrs. Cappiello and Rossella Savarese of SyArt Gallery involved in the coordination of the thirty-seven artists on display, for the sixth event of the kermesse present about one hundred works representing countries such as Italy, Spain, the United States, Poland, Nigeria, the United Kingdom, China, Germany, Austria, Iran and Colombia.

An appointment that since 2017 characterizes and enriches the calendar of events hosted by the Sorrento Foundation. From an idea of visionary collector Leone Cappiello, the format over time has been structured becoming, for artists who succeed in getting through the selections, an opportunity for growth with concrete international visibility. To art historian Rossella Savarese, curator and artistic director of the Festival, the arduous task of final selection among the hundreds and hundreds of requests that have arrived in the various editions that follow one another. On display in the spacious exhibition halls of Villa Fiorentino are painting, sculpture, installations, photography, fiber art, digital pop, and video art. There is no shortage of site-specific projects including "We can exchange stickers" by Spanish artist and lecturer Rafael Romero, whose project motivates citizen participation in culture and knowledge. Romero "swaps" his watercolors (for the City of Sorrento he chooses a marine subject) with "trading cards" created by visitors. The final mural is composed exclusively of the works created by the participants and donated to the City of Sorrento. The same project idea has been accepted in museums and cultural institutions in Spain, Argentina and Morocco and more than four thousand people have participated.

Another interesting site-specific project is "We were there" by Iranian artist Arezu Zargar. The central theme of this project is an investigation of how to be present while we are absent. Is our presence physical? Are we really in the same place as long as our presence is recorded? An articulated work that combines sculpture, installation and video art and summarizes the curatorial leitmotif of the entire exhibition that through multiple media and research tells about the human being and his atavistic wiggling in a physical and mental space. Also confirmed is the collaboration with the National Cancer Institute IRCCS Fondazione G. Pascale in Naples with the "Adopt a Wall" project. Artist Gualtiero Redivo and SyArt Gallery donate a work to the hospital as a therapy tool and source of benefit for patients. The wooden trophy for the Arbiter Fata Verde Prize, an award reserved for one of the artists in the exhibition, is made by Sorrento artist Toni Wolfe.