On this page I present the visual identity and teaser I created this year for Animaphix – Festival of New Contemporary Languages, held in Bagheria, Palermo. The image was born from the idea of symbolically representing tightrope walkers, a powerful and poetic metaphor for artists: suspended figures, always balancing on an invisible wire, in search of a fragile and unstable equilibrium. The tightrope walker moves between two extremes: reality and imagination, reason and madness, life and death. Every step is an act of trust – in the body, in intuition, in the void beneath. Like the artist, the tightrope walker is exposed, alone yet watched by all, suspended between intimacy and spectacle, constantly teetering between failure and wonder. Another essential element in this work is the presence of the former Sicilcalce lime factory, a striking industrial structure abandoned since the 1990s, located right next to the beautiful Villa Cattolica, home of the Guttuso Museum and the festival itself.
Two contrasting architectures – one baroque and noble, the other raw, skeletal, industrial – that today coexist, dialogue, and reflect one another.
This tension became a central theme of the visual identity, developed in close collaboration with Rosalba Colla, the festival’s artistic director. As someone passionate about industrial archaeology, I found it impossible to ignore the visual and symbolic dialogue between these two buildings. The factory, now a relic of industrial archaeology, is part of Bagheria’s layered history, suspended between memory and erasure – much like a tightrope walker on the wire of time.
My sincere thanks go to Rosalba Colla, artistic director, and Andrea Martignoni, festival director, for their trust and collaboration. It was a pleasure to work on this image, for a festival that brings to Bagheria some of the most fascinating and inspired voices in animation and contemporary visual art from around the world. I would like to thank the artist, musician and friend Alessandro d'Alessandro for the soundtrack.
