Aprile in Pu-téca

Crossings, Escapes, Extradisciplinary Thinking

A curatorial project by Giovanni Ambrosio, with the support of Christian Taranto for Tramandars

A gallery you inhabit: outside

Aprile in Pu-téca was born from a shared question: what can an artistic program be today when it exists outside the mainstream art circuits and traditional disciplinary frameworks? And how can we rely on friendship? What contemporary art should talk about?

Together with Christian Taranto, we created a curatorial cycle that places at its core the idea of art as a space for inquiry, as a porous practice, as a shared gesture.

The project unfolded in April 2025 in the historic Borgo Casamale of Somma Vesuviana and brought together artists, scholars, poets, performers, and citizens across four public events.  Pu-téca, is a former shop transformed by Tramandars into a 24-hour accessible contemporary art shrine, along with other informal spaces in the village. Far from conventional exhibition logics, Pu-téca is a place to be inhabited, not just a container for artworks.

Curating as contextual construction

For me, to curate means to think together. It means creating conditions and devices that allow questions, practices, and contradictions to emerge.

Aprile in Pu-téca was a process of shared self-education, a way to reflect on what it means to produce contemporary art today—with one’s own tools, independently, outside of institutional calendars.

Thanks to the precious collaboration of Tani Russo and the association Tramandars, we were able—especially in the first three events, to establish a deep connection between the themes addressed and the place that hosted us. The local invited guests brought powerful resonances between the artistic content and the historical and social layers of Somma Vesuviana an,d the Casamale, grounding the project locally and politically.

Our Encounters, Four Crossings

1. 

Turmoil

A sound performance by Joss Turnbull and Mario Gabola.

An intense live dialogue through extended percussions, amplified saxophone and analog electronics—pushing sonic boundaries and challenging conventional listening habits.

What made this moment particularly significant was the open invitation to the village’s traditional and young tammorra drummers, who actively joined the musicians during the concert. This spontaneous and site-specific interaction created an unexpected fusion between radical improvisation and local folk practices, turning the performance into a shared acoustic space between experimental sound and community heritage.

2. 

Feeling. Visioni da un reading

A poetic reading by Gianni Valentino, accompanied by Luigi Iovino, performing from his book Feeling. Pino Daniele in the public square—turning the space into a living archive of voice, music, and Neapolitan collective memory.

3. 

Disertare gli impegni e cospirare

More than a book launch, this presentation of Il disertore (The Deserter) by Francesco Misiano—curated by Luca Salza (Edizioni Cronopio)—became a moment of political and curatorial formation.

With a powerful intervention by Patrizio Esposito, we reflected on the act of refusal—not only in politics and war, but in contemporary artistic production.

What does it mean today for an independent art space to act outside the logics of visibility, value, and cultural policy? This was an open collective interrogation, framed as a moment of active self-education and shared rethinking of artistic roles.

4. 

mudrābox(e) – unbo

A presentation of the artist book Mudrābox(e) by Daniela Allocca, in dialogue with Kevin Del Cuoco.

More than a publication, the box embodies a poetic, somatic, and visual journey.

I had the privilege of designing the book, from typography (Infini by Sandrine Nugue), to layout and editorial structure. Printed in 80 hand-numbered copies, and produced by Il Laboratorio – Nola under the guidance of Vittorio Avella, Mudrābox(e) is a curatorial gesture in the form of a box—a layered and tactile object of research, intimacy, and ritual.

Contemporary art as a space of escape, not a discipline

Aprile in Pu-téca is not a detour from my artistic practice—it is a natural extension of it.

For me, curating means composing living contexts: spaces where voices meet, where research becomes relational, where gesture and theory coexist.

Contemporary art is not a predefined category—it is an open space of proximity, reflection, resistance. Through this project we explored art as an exilic and fragile form, capable of producing knowledge, gathering bodies, and questioning power, without being trapped in formats.

The programme ended with the strong sense that an art project can also be a place to remain, to return to, to think from.

A space for proximity, crossing, and mutual learning.