Adrian Paci: The Encounter

The event “U ‘ncuontru” by the Albanian artist Adrian Paci took place in Modica in the hours before dawn on April 4, Easter Sunday 2021. Having attended several times in Modica’s Easter rituals in the past, the artist was inspired by the famous religious ritual of the “Madonna vasa vasa”, which takes place on Easter Sunday and has always been attended by thousands of people. He was enchanted by the human participation, the festive atmosphere, the gestures and the rhythm of the procession. In this pandemic era, Paci imagined a nocturnal and clandestine meeting all the same. A meeting far from the lights and enthusiasm of the crowd. A silent and intimate encounter between a mother and a son, between a woman veiled in black who removes her cloak and embraces her risen son, regardless of the applause, the noise and the music. For Paci, stripping away ritual to achieve an element of essentiality also means investigating a zone of need that goes beyond habits and inertia. His work often investigates that territory that resists transformation and continues to assert itself despite changes. The intertwining of the simulacrum and truth, of narrative and real-life experience is another central element in Paci’s work that returns strongly in this latest project. Through symbolic elements, Paci’s intervention explores the dynamics of a complex and stratified reality, in search of new connections and new possible openings.

The show features the video and a series of photos taken from the famous performance of the same name that took place in Scicli in 2011, also the upshot of collaboration between the gallery and the great Albanian artist, and of which “U ‘ncuontru”, ten years on, represents an ideal development.