Special projects, 8 October 2018

“Campagna Salentina” (Salento countryside) by Chekos’art

A mural on the SS101 at Galatina (LE) to enhance ANAS road infrastructure

video: Cristian Sabatelli

For a few days now, a work dedicated to the land and nature has adorned the overpass at km 16.700 of the SS101 “Salentina di Gallipoli” state road in Galatina, in the Collemeto area, province of Lecce.

The new mural, funded by Anas and painted by Chekos’Art with the artistic direction of 167bstreet, in collaboration with the Municipality of Galatina, is part of a wider Anas project to enhance and regenerate parts of its infrastructure in many regions of Italy.

“Thanks to our project”, said Claudio Arcovito, head of Marketing and Customer Service at Anas, “the road is not only an infrastructure for connection and mobility in the country but also a tool to promote art and culture through street art. Anas has in fact started a path that uses street art to support its investment strategy in the maintenance and enhancement of its infrastructure and, in cases like this one in Collemeto, also to protect it from vandalism and decay; it is an increasingly modern Anas, close to the needs of the community, which also invests in promoting culture”.

Over the years, illegal fly posting and in some cases illegal dumping of waste had sadly robbed this stretch of road of beauty and dignity, while it deserves splendour and care.

The drawings show a typical landscape of the Salento countryside, with its typical colours in earthy tones.

The protagonist is the face of a young woman against the landscape, whose gaze invites passers by to stop and look far beyond the wall.

The intention of Chekos’Art, a street artist from Lecce who has already painted for Anas one of the seventeen major works on Rome’s Grande Raccordo Anulare, is to make the mural a bridge between the tradition it represents and a gaze towards the future, as wide as the painted horizon. A view halfway between present and future, painted in the artist’s distinctive personal optical style, which intrigues passers by thanks to its double focus: its coloured lines catch the eye and, seen from a distance, become a single composition.

A shared aim with the Culture Department of the Municipality of Galatina was to enhance a grey structure, starting a new cultural path in the suburbs and small communities, which are being constantly rediscovered.

Since the SS101 state road was built, the main link between Lecce and Gallipoli, the bridge has been for the people of Collemeto a kind of dividing wall from the surrounding countryside, where the town’s work has always taken place.

The aim is to combine local tradition with a structure that actually brings Collemeto closer to all the towns of Salento, almost a continuum with the surrounding environment, as a moment of meeting, socialising and sharing life.

“We chose life in the fields, and so our landscape, as the image that best represents the identity of the Collemeto community”, said Cristina Dettù, Culture Councillor of the City of Galatina. “There is also the image of the future, of those young people who never stop looking ahead by investing in their homeland. We wanted to do it with an art form that, growing within the urban perimeter, makes people fall in love with art itself and lets them taste the shy but extremely deep concept of culture”.