167 ART PROJECT 2019

The 167 Art Project, a reduction in the success and warm welcome of previous years, places in a line of continuity and strong self-determination of the community in the area. The project for the third time is strongly desired by the parish community of San Giovanni Battista, especially in the person of Don Gerardo, and by the cohesion that the cause has arisen among its inhabitants.

The social fabric of the well-known popular district 167 is undergoing a rapid transformation. In recent years, in fact, the new assignments of popular housing are mainly migrant families, therefore the neighborhood is getting richer, becoming more and more multicultural. The phenomenon possessed in something extraordinary because from a district subject to criticality is deputed to become one of the best spaces for coexistence ..

“The world is ours” is the emblem of the trust placed in the “new world” that is developing in the neighborhood, but this world is a place of coexistence and not of exclusion. It is essential to work in the present. For this reason, the research project is particularly dedicated and aimed at this more concrete and human one to whom we can entrust our “future”: children. Elective entrants of our cultural and artistic productions, because they are the only ones able to continue to contrast with their deliberate purity, feelings of commonality and shared and welcoming unanimity, devoid of hate logic.

So the two Apulian artists intervened in this edition, CHEKOS Art from Lecce and Millo from Mesagne pay homage to the children, inspired by their innocence, transparency and truth.

The artistic direction and the organizational intervention is a cure of 167B street, urban art laboratory, name inspired by the homonymous neighborhood, directed by Ania Kitlas and CHEKOS ART. The project was created thanks to the sponsor “Caparol”, which supplies the colors and thanks to the kind collaboration of the “Edil Colazzo Network 2012 Group” of Soleto. In addition, the project is supported by the Ark of Salento which demonstrates, recently, the confidence to grant the walls of public housing, together with the municipality of Lecce which grants us the public land, necessary for the works.

Photo credits: Sergio Manzone

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