Tuesday, March 19 marks the start of the Naples Queer Festival: the first edition of the event, created by Compagnia Enzo Moscato and Casa del Contemporaneo, with artistic direction by Giuseppe Affinito, will kick off in Sala Assoli at 7:00 PM, with the ouverture entrusted to Mariano Gallo, also known as Priscilla, the most famous Italian drag queen and host of the Italian version of Drag Race.
Following, 2 exhibitions will be inaugurated: the photographic exhibition by Fabio Schiattarella, titled Out of The Cage_Beyond the Queerness and an artistic installation by Dario Biancullo, Agrifuturismo Trans Vesuvian Counseling, which rethinks the art and fashion market outside of commercial processes. The evening in Assoli concludes with the stand-up comedy of Simonetta Musitano, who with her monologues tries to dismantle the heteronormative binary system. Priscilla, the famous Italian drag queen, will confront her alter ego, the actor Mariano Gallo, an artist who has created a flamboyant, ironic, and bold character that has made Italy fall in love with the hosting of the Drag Race Italia program.
Mariano, in a face-to-face with the dazzling Priscilla, tall and platinum blonde, will recount the encounter with his feminine side, explaining how makeup and accessories were merely a means to bring it to life. Gallo will perform a monologue that is a moment of confession and sharing with the audience, to shed light on the process of reconciliation with his inner world. Because Priscilla has given Mariano a new perspective and a sense of nuance, making him confront the homophobia within himself and forcing him to deal with his internal and external complexity.
The opening day of the Festival continues with the opening of the exhibitions by Fabio Schiattarella, assisted by Mattia Tarantino, titled Out of The Cage_Beyond the Queerness and the artistic installation by Dario Biancullo, Agrifuturismo Trans Vesuvian Counseling. «In this work, the diptychs often arise from chance encounters followed by discussions between the photographer and the people portrayed, following experimental research approaches – explains Schiattarella –, where memories and experiences are recognized and intersect, impacting, even unconsciously, the pose, the expression, the message of each individual portrait. The creative process that develops during the shooting becomes an expressive stage in which, the presence of the camera tends to disappear as the suggestions launched by the photographer concentrate, with the aim of accompanying the people to give themselves: I believe that gender remains an empty word without an accurate work of subjectivation of personal stories».
«Each participant lives in their own way a progressive dialogue with their interiority, reaching a pose that becomes iconic. The displayed portraits depict subjects living in Naples and Paris, people who although not knowing each other seem ready to dance together, maintaining the reminiscence of their steps crossing beyond the queerness, precisely. The Parisian session of Out of the Cage was curated and supported by Francesca Grisanti and is currently on display in Paris» he concluded.
Regarding the artistic installation Agrifuturismo Trans Vesuvian Counseling, Dario Biancullo speaks: «I am an artist, designer, costumer driven by the urgency to “self-determine by deviation” through alternative paths and resistance to the commercial and industrialized processes of the art and fashion market. Creating for me is a story of a queer family where “the family” is the bed of the submissive and the nightmare. But the intent of building a “family” serves to open discussions, among dissenting people, on how the art and fashion industry constitutes stereotypes and fuels an entire process of denaturalization of the body and conditions us to repeat, obligatorily, models of existence established only for the purpose of maintaining the industry, and how all this crosses us. The “family” production process can be the imaginary result of all the crossings and the perception of this discussion. Importance of the exchange, because we are always robbed. Our life is trimmed, our information is stolen because, for example, the fashion and Art industry, are a possibility to co-opt our discourse and transform it into fashion and art to let it die later. It's a way to kill by sucking».
The closing of the evening is entrusted to the irreverent stand-up comedy of Simonetta Musitano. The actress was born in Reggio Calabria in 1993 to a man and a woman. But soon the duo dissolves, and she realizes that all her money will be donated to the order of Psychologists. The protagonist is a woman who is not afraid to narrate with irony every most uncomfortable detail about herself, and at the same time destroy every stereotype, every certainty of yours, making you laugh but also "reflect". A woman who wants to tell what it means to be a woman in transition, before a cisgender man does it in her place.