“While time passed”, Orgosolo's tribute to Francesco Del Casino
An exhibition dedicated to the artist who has enriched the spaces of the town
A tribute to an artist who has enriched the spaces of the town. With its murals that bring historical facts and stories of men and women back to general attention. Until August 18, Orgosolo embraces and thanks the painter Francesco Del Casino by dedicating to him, in the former town hall, the exhibition "While time was passing" with many symbols and meanings.
The initiative is treated in detail, right from the reception of visitors entrusted to the cultural association "Cannasas Teatro". As a counterpoint to the works of Del Casino, the voices that sing "sos atitos". They are those of Tatana Cubeddu who mourns the death of one of the many children who died during the shipwreck on the coast of Cutro on the night between 25 and 26 February 2023, of Maria Corda who evokes the dreams and aspirations of all migrants and of Agnese Filindeu who plays Giuseppina Marcias, the mother of Antonio Gramsci.
On the floor “unu tapinu de mortu”, a funeral pall, a now rare textile product from 1850, woven by skilled hands and above which, during the wake, the deceased was placed, watched over by the mourners who sang praises with the they sing. In this context, the paintings of Francesco Del Casino find a very happy life, inspired by the "Raft of the Medusa", the work of Théodore Géricault which recalls the shipwreck of the French frigate "Meduse" in 1816. Lest we forget. To reflect on the present marked by other tragic sea voyages on the Mediterranean routes.
Gramsci's Letters
The exhibition, which can be visited every day from 4 to 10 pm (free admission), also recalls the values expressed in the writings of Antonio Gramsci. His "Letters from prison" were transcribed by hand by a group of Orgolese and are presented in the rooms of the former municipal house joined together with invisible threads to express the sense of community and the perennial value of the Sardinian intellectual's thought. Del Casino himself, already in the 70s and 80s of the last century, had dedicated several murals to the great thinker. As Tomaso Montanari wrote: «Del Casino doesn't just show us Gramsci's head. Show large, mobile hands. Hands to write. But also to caress. Or to drink a coffee, or to smoke a cigarette. And finally the whole body: that suffering body which instead appears here as healed. Free: finally free to be loved».
Collective work
Paola Lai, president of the "Cannasas" association, underlines that the exhibition is "the result of a collective work, a form of participatory art, which has involved, in different ways, the population: whoever wrote the texts" de sos atitos ”, who the text dedicated to Del Casino performed by the “Tenor Supramonte" on the day of the inauguration. Others have transcribed the "Letters of Gramsci", still others read some "Letters" on the occasion of the inaugural evening. The whole community - concludes Lai – has embraced this cultural project.” In the last room, other works by Francesco Del Casino who lead visitors to the rediscovery of his beloved Orgosolo: the portraits of women and men of a community that he narrated with his murals.
