Nostalgia, bloody nostalgia
Of a street, of a friend, of a bar
Of a country that dreams and makes mistakes
But if you ask then it gives you everything.

“Nostalgia Canaglia”
Power A. Carrisi

It’s hard to walk around the streets of Palermo.

It is as difficult as walking into its small shops lined with stories and people who have passed by, and it is just as difficult to enter the larger shops, those that proudly wear the name of a local supermarket chain on the outside but in the inside have no intention of adapting to the minimalist display aesthetics— on the contrary, they prefer to adorn the shelves with drawings made by the children of the neighbourhood.
In the same way, it is not easy to resist the doorman's jokes, those jokes tested by time and experience, bringing a pleased smile to his face even before he has finished them.

Not to mention the private courtyards with centuries-old trees; of the hallways of the buildings with the hanging paintings; blaring music from wide open windows in broad daylight… I could go on for hours.

The difficulty, at least mine, lies in living all these experiences with ease, without always finding myself analysing them through the pathetic lens of nostalgia.

Because alas, going to Palermo has the same effect on me as the first films by Paolo Virzì, in which an Italy of the early 90s is portrayed, split in two parts, between the euphoric supporters of private networks and the intellectuals firmly anchored to ideals of good politics and trade union struggle.
Today, in both "parts" one can glimpse a tender uncertainty about the future, at times proactive, at others knowingly disillusioned.

Here, Palermo generates in me a strange mix of euphoria and disenchantment.

When I met Antonella and Leonardo I was in Lisbon, where I have now lived for almost 3 years.
For a while I hadn’t seen the smiles, the desire to do things and the kindness they brought there with them. I then found these in every street of Palermo, together with another inevitable protagonist: calm. The same calm that, during the setting up of the Alice Pilusi exhibition, fell like a veil to quell every little inconvenience.

“They gave us the wrong fridge.
No problem, they will give you a new one. But one piece a day, calmly"

“The print didn't turn out well.
No problem, the printer will make another two for you"

This calm has never stressed us, indeed it has always protected us from anxiety, never making us feel in danger. On the other hand, we were organising an exhibition not an open heart operation.
Everything could be solved, always.

And so it was.
That calm allowed us to create one of the most beautiful exhibitions that my partner and I have ever curated, certainly the one that relaxed us the most.

Palermo is not magical, Palermo is an opportunity, an opportunity to remember that those values ​​that have survived time, wars and changes have not simply been miraculously miraculous by the axe of progress, but have proved to be the most suitable to face life with the right dose of serenity that guaranteed them and those who handed them to be invincible.