Via Casilina Vecchia: the "Funky" side of Rome

If you're searching for Rome's "funky" side, you can't do much better than a stretch of via Casilina Vecchia, running southeast off via Castrense, a street that connects the Tuscolano neighborhood with Pigneto. (We're not talking about via Casilina, a nasty street for walkers that runs parallel with "Vecchia" on the other side of some railroad tracks). 

The first thing you'll see is the massive complex of Casa Santa Giacinta--a Catholic charity serving the poor and elderly

And next to it, tucked in a bit, a cute 20th-century chapel in something akin to mission style. 

Just beyond, as the street narrows, there is (or was just months ago), a mural by Alice, a prolific Rome street artist. Part of Alice's original work (she's known for painting young women) is visible behind the cars that are usually parked there, and part has been covered by graffiti "artists." A portion of her mural is visible upper right. 

The lower left portion of this wall proved fertile territory for this "accidental art"/found art photographer, a portion of it (below) ending up as his business card.

Following the road, you'll come upon an arch, usually highly decorated by the spray-paint crowd. Why it exists we have no idea. Here is Dianne, photographed with the arch, though from the other side. 

Ahead, the centerpiece of the journey, the aqueduct Acqua Felice. It's not ancient. Dating to the late Renaissance, it was constructed under Pope Sixtus V. Still it's very cool, and here are there it utilizes the columns of Aqua Claudia (of ancient origin). "Felice" is over 28km long--and you can see it rise from ground level a few miles out at the Parco degli Aquedotti (Park of the Aqueducts). 

Just as the road looks like it's going to go through an aqueduct arch, it turns sharply left, crossing the tracks--just one lane, and quite a bit of traffic. Not the safest spot for a pedestrian. 

Then the road turns again, runs through the aqueduct--and you'll find yourself walking on its western side. 

Although most of the arches date to the late 16th century, a few--they will be obvious--were constructed at the turn of the last century to allow access for trains.

Further along, you'll find homes on one side of the street, the aqueduct (and apparently some homes and businesses) on the other. 

One of the businesses, located in and through an aqueduct arch, specializes in copies of statues and other ancient and Renaissance pieces:

This staircase seems to lead through the aqueduct to a home:

Inside one of the arches, someone has created a devotional tableau:

When via Casilina Vecchia dead ends, turn left, through the aqueduct, then immediately right onto via del Mandrione. Poet, novelist, and film director Pier Paolo Pasolini spent a lot of time in the Mandrione neighborhood, seeking the "real" Rome.  [D: all signs of inhabitants where he once strolled are now gone. No doubt in the name of "slum clearance."]

About 200 yards ahead, there's a narrow passage-way off right. 

Turning left out of the pass way, a few yards down you'll find another lane off to the right, leading to a staircase--and beneath it, the Tuscolano 'hood. Turn right at the first street and work your way back to  Piazza Lodi--and through the wall to via Castrense, and your starting point. 

Another side of Rome. Sweet!

Bill 

 

Rome's Alice Pasquini: Street Art Feminism, and Beyond

Closed newspaper kiosk, Piazza Mancini, Flaminio 

It's not easy to find information about Rome-based street artist Alice Pasquini.  What's available on the internet seems to come mostly from her website--valuable in its way, but limited and perhaps misleading.  Featured prominently on that website are the words "a visual artist who works as an illustrator, set designer and painter," but one searches in vain for evidence of her work as a set designer, and it's not clear where she's worked as an illustrator--unless she's referring here to her smaller works of street art.  She's essentially a painter, sometimes a stenciller.  Although her website, and other accounts derived from it, give her name as Alice and AliCè, her work is commonly signed Alice (pronounced Ah-lee-chay in Italian; hence the AliCè may be more representative, although in Italian the accent is on the second syllable).

Portrait of Alice by C215

What is clear is that she's prolific.  At age 35 (born 1980--even that was hard to find), she's worked as a street artist in dozens of major cities, including London, Sydney, New York, Barcelona, Saigon and, of course, Rome.

Pasquini grew up in Rome Prati quartiere, immersed in the '90s hip-hop scene, where she discovered SprayLiz--a comic book heroine whose specialty was political graffiti. Inspired, she graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, took some coursework in animation in Madrid (where she earned an MA in Critical Arts Studies at the Universidad Computense), and lived for a year in London. Somewhere along the way--there's a certain vagueness in her own reports--"I specialized in old style animation and worked as an illustrator and set designer."




Having been warned that painting was dead, she became a painter.  "'Art died with Duchamp, forget about drawing'--that's what my professors taught me and that's why I wanted to  get out of the studio and the academy."



She likes painting illegally.  "The adrenalin," she notes, "the 15 minute countdown to do something decent--to have your eyes on the lookout, to test what you can do spontaneously." Some of the smaller pieces she's done in Rome probably are in the "illegal" category, for she likes to paint on public objects--trash bins, electrical boxes, for example--that "could need a little love."

A small portion of Alice's work at a bar/kiosk in
Piazza Mancini, Flaminio

That said, in a current climate in which the best street art is recognized, encouraged and, in a certain way, contained, Pasquini has found accommodation with the "academy."  In Rome, her work has been exhibited at MACRO (2014), the American Embassy (2013), the Casa dell'Architettura (2013, a sensational one-woman show), and most recently at the Temple University gallery on the Tevere (2015).  In addition, it seems obvious that much of the Flaminio work--on kiosk businesses--was accomplished with permission.

Army barracks, site of 2015 Outdoor Festival, opening Oct. 2

With 15 other artists, Pasquini will participate in the 2015 edition of the Outdoor Festival, mounted this year at via Guido Reni 7, a former army barracks (ex-caserma) near the MAXXI gallery in Flaminio.  The show opens October 2.

One needn't depend on galleries to see Pasquini's work.  There's plenty of it on Rome's walls and other surfaces--especially in Flaminio, where she lived for a time with fellow street artist C215 (an influence on her work), Quadraro, and San Lorenzo, where a major mural lines via dei Sabelli.

Pasquini's street art celebrates "strong, independent women" (her words), contemplative, confident, sensuous, emotional, and usually joyful young women, meeting the world and engaging life in a physical way, whether leaping in exultation, riding a motorscooter (above), running, or relaxing in the confidence of one's body (see the painting at the top of this post). A website describes her art as "affectionate."




The via dei Sabelli mural (above and below) in San Lorenzo has a dark, threatening quality--one is tempted to say post-apocalyptic.

The elaborate work carried out in the basement of the Casa dell'Architettura, titled "Cave of Tales" (translated into English) also has that dark, foreboding quality, here suggesting that young women in the big city face a potentially difficult and threatening future.

The challenges of the big city, rendered in something
like German expressionist style

Alice at work

Alice plans with a ballpoint pen and sketchbook.  Studio work is accomplished with acrylics and enamels on wood, smaller city pieces with stencils, larger wall paintings with acrylics and spray paints.  Her work doesn't strike us as unusually innovative, especially given the enormous creativity and inventiveness of the current generation of street artists.  She's a painter, working--again, for a street artist--in a surprisingly traditional style and with a feminist message that's both welcome and rather well-traveled.

As you walk the city and come across the art of Alice Pasquini, consider, too, her words describing the dilemma of the street artist:

Moscow, 2014

"An artist who works outside, you always have one problem: you work someplace which isn't your own, where you don't live and to which you may not ever return.  What you do should be artistically or politically important.  But it is not a given that it will be positive for the people who have to live with it every day. This is a risk I take with my form of art."

Bill

Alice decorates a small trailer, courtyard of the Lanificio, a factory artspace, via di Pietralata, 59 (2013) . Dianne at right 

Luca Maleonte: Rome Street Artist does Francesco Totti

By Alice, on via Casilina Vecchia

RST follows, recognizes, and appreciates the work of a small group of serious street artists, Roman and otherwise, whose work has appeared in the city.  Among them are C215, Hogre, Alice and, most recently--a discovery of only weeks ago--Luca Maleonte.

Maleonte's Vespe, in Quadraro

Maleonte recently made a big splash in Quadraro--a suburb on both sides of via Tuscolana--where he drew a series of wasps/"vespe" to commemorate the efforts of the area's people to harass, irritate, and disrupt the German occupation of the city in 1943/1944. Romans have long memories for that occupation, and many continue to dislike Germany, things German, and Germans for acts committed 70 years ago.


Our favorite Maleonte is just two blocks from our apartment in via Olbia, not far from San Giovanni in Laterano and within a few blocks of where Totti grew up.  It's a 3-story drawing of AS Roma soccer legend Francesco Totti, accomplished on a school building at the corner of via Aquila and via Farsalo.  Totti may have attended school there, or the location may have been chosen because it's across the street from an athletic field where the blossoming star learned his trade.  Despite its simplicity, it's instantly recognizable as Totti. The artist's name is at left, rendered here as Luca/Male/Onte and often written as one word: Lucamaleonte.  He was born in 1983.

Maleonte's "Vecchio a Chi?", in San Giovanni

The Totti is the first part of a Maleonte cycle, "Contemporary Mythology," carried out under the auspices of 999CONTEMPORARY--which provided all the funds--and the local government of the area, Rome's 7th muncipio.  The title of the work--"Vecchio a Chi?"--"Old to Whom?"--was Totti's response when, at age 37, critics called him "old."  Maleonte intends the work to engage the idea of aging in contemporary society.  The artist works in a stencil style that combines contemporary street art with touches of 15th-century medieval.

The Totti work, tagged.  

Unfortunately, the original work has been "tagged"--that is, written over, in this case in a limited way, the tagging occurring only at the bottom of the portrait.  Even so, the original work is a significant one and, from one we have learned of the ethical traditions of street art, should have been left alone.

For photos of Maleonte accomplishing the Totti work, see http://www.999gallery.com/?p=12192

Luca Maleonte's contribution to a Macro Testaccio exhibit on street art.  It has an Adam-and-Eve look,and is
titled "Allegory: The Future Flees the Present and Takes Refuge in the Past".  The
exhibit is in La Pelanda and is free.