The 1980 earthquake in the Irpinia region of Southern Italy left more than 300,000 people homeless, and over 30 years later, many of the villages they left behind are still uninhabited. Last year, artist Jorge Mañes Rubio and photographer Gianluca Tesauro traveled to Cilento and Vallo di Diano National Park to photograph several of these abandoned communities, including chapels that had been cracked by tremors, stripped by looters, and worn down from years of exposure to the elements. But Buona Fortuna, the project that grew out of their trip, "is not asking for reconstruction nor restoration," as Tesauro explains, "but to preserve them as what they are today: truly works of art."
With Buona Fortuna ("good luck" in Italian), the duo hopes to create "a series of new artworks and installations" that will replace the relics stolen from these chapels with "new fictional symbols, inspired by Southern Italian folklore." No word yet on what form these newfangled antiquities will take, but for now, their photo series is worth a look, purely for the "great beauty and fragility of a heritage that is inevitably doomed to disappear." Hit up Design Boom for the full series.
· Buona Fortuna documents Italian chapels abandoned after the Irpinia earthquake [Design Boom]
· All Abandonment Issues posts [Curbed National]
· All Houses of the Holy posts [Curbed National]