‘Quore spinato’. The Osmosis Between Image and Lived

Abstract

Quore Spinato is a pictorial, audiovisual and written narration which explores the restless relationship that language and other modes of representation share with the past and present in the Spanish Quarters of Naples. Its creators, the Neapolitan duo cyop&kaf, have realized – on the walls, the portcullis and the doors of the district – two hundred and forty-two paintings since 2004, without commission. The large number of works stems from a set of spontaneous exchanges, born of accidental encounters between artists and inhabitants. The semiotic perspective allows for an analysis of the representation’s space which is closely related to the mythical, anthropological and poetic experiences of the place, in line with the practices of space revealed by Michel de Certeau. It follows a painted re-actualization of the sacred that attests to the complex religious sentiments of the Neapolitan people, as they are embedded in everyday life. The sensory brushstrokes of Baconian inspiration outline incisive representations of lived existence, and are comparable to the “stream of consciousness” technique deployed in the narrative structure of James Joyce’s Ulysses.  Field research has revealed that the subliminal nature of the paintings stimulates hints of self-narration and self-discovery: on closer inspection, the anthropomorphic drawings trigger empathic effects that can be analyzed from the perspective of Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of perception. The district becomes a text of inscription and re-inscription, an instrument of progressive reinterpretations of the inhabitants’ subjectivity. Therefore, Quore Spinato constitutes a “heterotopia” that is capable of furthering the current debate on the transformations of the street art’s role in the metropolis.