Interview “Il Quartino” by the director, Liborio Palmeri, of the San Rocco Museum of Contemporary Art in Trapani with the curator Carla Ricevuto
This interview is the confirmation that art cancels the borders and barriers between human beings.
Liborio Palmeri, director of the San Rocco Museum of Contemporary Art in Trapani (Sicily), last July, invited Carla Ricevuto to tell about her experience as a curator, starting right from San Rocco until her transfer to the United States. A beautiful collaboration relationship was born between Carla and Liborio, made up of deep esteem and mutual trust, during 2016, when together, with a team of young professionals, they made a series of exhibitions in the incredible structure of the Sicilian Museum.
A commitment, surrounded by emotions and special encounters, which increased Carla’s awareness of wanting to pursue her dream: to move to New York and make her skills available for contemporary art. Liborio has always encouraged Carla and, like the people she loves, he has always cheered for her. The young curator’s American experience begins at the end of September 2017, when she took that flight that changed her life.
“Flying, what a beautiful word! Flying can say many things. Flying is almost a bit like wanting. ” Carla
Art work: Grazia Inserillo
Ph credit: Maurizio Pometti
In the interview, Carla tells of how she begins to approach the New York reality and how in the end she will not remain only for three months, as she had thought at the beginning, but how her path has opened up to life, to the world, to the art and love.
She collaborated with the George Billis Gallery, an experience that profoundly shapes her as a professional, and in the time that remains available to her, she cultivates relationships with new artists and begins to build an imaginary bridge between Sicily and New York. During these months, in the midst of her American dream, she unexpectedly finds the love of her life, Alix Tucou, a French musician and composer, also in the big apple to pursue his dreams.
“If I hadn’t had the courage to take that flight, to pursue what I love, I wouldn’t be so happy today. The man of my life was waiting for me in New York and without knowing it I ran into his arms. ” Carla
From September 2019, Carla began her collaboration as Cultural Art Curator with Art Now After Hours, with two great professionals in the sector: Robin King and Jonn Nubian, in the always exuberant and moving city before the closure for Covid.
Today, even if there is a pandemic in time, where a hug seems to be dangerous, the passion for art that unites them is stronger than anything else. The team has never stopped working hard to prepare for the day when everything will be as it was before.
When art can again be enjoyed hand-to-hand and when we will no longer be divided by glittering screens. While waiting for this desired event, to return to our lives, to our normality, the director Liborio wishes the best to Carla with these words:
“May everything in your life be characterized by slowness and sweetness and that this dream can last indefinitely, because love, from our heart’s perspective, never ends.” Liborio Palmeri
Interview in the Museo d’Arte Contemporanea San Rocco by Liborio Palmeri:
Link Sound Portrait of Carla’s experience by Alix Tucou:
Letter to New York by Carla
Written on April 19, Astoria, 2020
Alix and I have been indoors since March 14th and we say that compared to other people we are not so bad, if it were not for this absurd situation that forces us to leave New York earlier than expected. This pains us and leaves us a bitter taste that is difficult to explain. Leaving here, without having chosen it with awareness, saddens us a lot. But tonight, while I’m lying on our bed, I want to be positive.
The atmosphere is magical, like every night, like every moment here in New York. Despite the great tragedy outside, the aura of freedom and lightness seems to have no equal. The air that enters from the window, located near the bed, gently glides over me and together with the light of the lamp, which illuminates these pages, still make me feel like a great dreamer. After all, New York has confirmed to me that there is nothing strange about it.
Tonight I want to think that the spirit of renewal that has pervaded me since the first day I arrived will never leave me again. Wherever I am. New York is known as the hardworking City, always on the move, the City that never sleeps (with Sinatra’s voice in my head) but, in reality, here I found my peace, my calm and my Carla. The one that was lost, found and lost again. Here I found my desire, my dream and everything I had tried to imagine.
People, friends, work and all those who are saddened by my departure today make me feel important despite the fact that in recent years I have used a language that is not mine to relate to them. My heart has arrived somewhere, however. As I said, I want to be positive for everything that still has to happen and never forget the attitude of all the days spent in these two and a half years.
Alix is the most important thing that has ever happened to me in life, the kind of thing that may never happen to you. In him I keep all my trust in life, in the strength to resist and in the stubbornness to always try, as long as possible. It is together that we are experiencing everything; in a little while we have already built a full time: full of thoughts, decisions and actions.
The intensity of this whole, of life here in New York, I am sure will take us far, will make us cross a road that will never be flat but that we will still have fun following. My promise, our promise has already been made, written and celebrated but it is thanks to this place that we can now live there, it is thanks to the magic and the constant dream that we live here. Attention, with this I do not want to assert that life in the streets of New York is so easy, on the contrary …
but it is exactly this duplicity that upsets you that makes you fall madly and madly in love with this place.
Dear New York, We will never say goodbye to you. You are part of our love and we love you. I love you.
Carla
