If you are not Neapolitan, the chances are you have never been to Procida. The small island is often eclipsed by its glitzier neighbors, Capri and Ischia, but it is well worth investigating. ‘In Italy you can have incredible experiences if you go off the beaten track,’ says&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1123/Gagosian">Gagosian</a>’s Pepi Marchetti Franchi. ‘No wonder the artist&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/6914/Daniel-Buren">Daniel Buren</a>&nbsp;has a house on the island.’ The founding director of Gagosian’s Rome outpost, Marchetti Franchi should know: She’s a steadfast champion of contemporary art in Italy and a driving force behind ‘Panorama,’ an exhibition curated by Vincenzo de Bellis, Curator and Associate Director of Programs, Visual Arts, at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. The exhibition will take over the whole island early next month; ‘I imagine people literally bumping into art,’ says de Bellis.

Marchetti Franchi is the vice president of ITALICS, a consortium born during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, which gathers together more than 60 of Italy’s most influential art galleries of contemporary, Modern, and pre-Modern art. At first, the initiative mainly took place online, but it is now ready to spread its wings in situ. ‘“Panorama” in Procida is an extension of our digital work which sought to present art in hidden corners of the Italian landscape, which is a big draw for both artists and collectors,’ Marchetti Franchi explains. It is also the first iteration in a series of in-person, possibly annual, exhibitions organized in collaboration with the other members of the consortium, which include&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1104/Massimo-De-Carlo">Massimo de Carlo</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1093/Galleria-Continua">Galleria Continua</a>, and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1261/Lia-Rumma">Lia Rumma</a>.Earlier this year, Procida was elected Italian Capital of Culture 2022, and its Director Agostino Riitano partnered with de Bellis to find the most arresting locations for the exhibition. The curator selected over 50 artworks for 31 locations including bars, restaurants, squares, and terraces located between the harbor and Palazzo d’Avalos, the stately palace used as a prison for most of the 20th century. ‘I explored three main motives – performance, immateriality, and monumentality – which interact with the history and the present of the island,’ says de Bellis. ‘It’s a laboratory working with Procida’s ecosystem, beyond tourism.’

Upon arrival, visitors will be greeted by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/search?q=Chen%20Zhen">Chen Zhen</a>’s Back to Fullness, Face to Emptiness (1997-2009), a neon sculpture in the shape of a planet, presented by Galleria Continua at the harbor. They’ll also encounter&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/8110/Giuseppe-Penone">Giuseppe Penone</a>’s Equivalenze (2016), one of his iconic bronze sculptures, installed by Gagosian on Procida’s highest terrace, overlooking the mainland. The exhibition plays with appropriation and camouflage, with Frutta showcasing a necklace by Alek O in a jewelry store. Presented by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1290/T293">T293</a>, Patrizio Di Massimo’s paintings of the patron saint of Procida, San Michele, will be blessed during a fictional ritual mixing the sacred and profane. The show will also bring people together: working with&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1170/kaufmann-repetto">kaufmann repetto</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/9388/Adrian-Paci">Adrian Paci</a>, will organize an evocative performance about resilience in the square devoted to the lateIl Postinoactor, and local favorite, Massimo Troisi, while&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/8057/Elisabetta-Benassi">Elisabetta Benassi</a>, who works with&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1193/Magazzino">Magazzino</a>, will tour the village in an old Piaggio Ape car shouting out the titles of artworks by Alighiero Boetti.

‘Panorama’ builds on a long-standing love affair between the artworld and the Naples area.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/8808/Joseph-Beuys">Joseph Beuys</a>&nbsp;thought the city was the ideal place for a revolution – a place where the idea of ‘people’ had not yet been betrayed by industrialization and profit. The Viennese Actionist&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/15771/Hermann-Nitsch">Hermann Nitsch</a>&nbsp;was attracted to the mystical side of the city and found a home at the Fondazione Morra, which now houses a museum dedicated to his work. Many other private initiatives foster encounters with the international art scene, from the collector-led&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/stories/why-i-collect-maurizio-morra-greco">Fondazione Morra Greco</a>, Collezione Agovino, and Made in Cloister, to artist-run spaces such as Residency 80121 and Tarsia Naples. Their work often intertwines with the activity of art institutions such as Madre -Donnaregina Museum of Contemporary Art, Capodimonte Museum, and the National Archaeological Museum.

Dancehall originated in the late 1970s in Jamaica’s most marginalized spaces, particularly inner-city Kingston. Bengolea is keenly aware of her presence within these contexts in relation to cultural appropriation: ‘Only dancers from Jamaica can invent dancehall steps, but everyone can reenact them to spread their spirit. The dancers in Kingston are inclusive and great teachers, eager to share their dancehall culture with foreign dancers and to reach global recognition, often through social media.’ This, among other things, grants the genre its powerful socially transformative function. ‘It is a way of communicating deeply across levels and celebrating life and death – an infinite library of steps, like Babel.’Transformation here also speaks to the body’s capacity to articulate sounds, move, and transcend its own matter. How did dance, choreography, and working with the body’s intelligence come to Bengolea and shape her practice? In Buenos Aires she found a teacher of anthropological dance, Guillermo Angelelli, who was affiliated with a community studying archaic ritual dances from South America and Asia. ‘I learned the dance of the wind from the Altiplano de Bolivia,’ says Bengolea. The three-rhythm dance uses hyperventilation to move at high altitudes, a technique necessary in the Bolivian high plains, which are more than 3,000 meters above sea level. ‘But Buenos Aires is at sea level, so we were hyperventilating more than expected,’ says Bengola. ‘We got into high, esoteric states of mind.’

Dealer&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1059/Alfonso-Artiaco">Alfonso Artiaco</a>&nbsp;started his career in 1986, when key collectors like Ernesto Esposito were already very active. ‘In Naples people and places literally come to you,’ he says, recalling meeting the artists&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/9202/Thomas-Hirschhorn">Thomas Hirschhorn</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/6776/Anri-Sala">Anri Sala</a> casually walking down the old&nbsp;Decumani&nbsp;roads, or when a common friend introduced him to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/33560/Maria-Thereza-Alves">Maria Thereza Alves</a>, who lives in town with fellow artist&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/7955/Jimmie-Durham">Jimmie Durham</a>. When he left his first gallery in Pozzuoli for Naples, Artiaco found a home in the former space of the dealer Lucio Amelio in Piazza dei Martiri, the elegant centre of the Chiaia neighborhood. Then, he nestled in the lively old town, in an undreamed-of 600 square meter space, only minutes away from the mesmerizing Sansevero Chapel Museum, which has since welcomed site-specific projects by gallery artists including&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/6769/Ann-Veronica-Janssens">Ann Veronica Janssens</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/6773/Giulio-Paolini">Giulio Paolini</a>.

‘Whoever comes to Naples will likely return,’ warns Federica Sheehan, the Director of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1297/Thomas-Dane-Gallery">Thomas Dane Gallery</a>’s Neapolitan outpost since it opened in 2018. She’s lingering on the gallery’s breathtaking terrace in Chiaia, in what used to be the home of the intellectual Benedetto Croce, and, was later, the German Consulate. ‘This is why we have both an exhibition space and lodgings for our artists and collaborators,’ she adds, mentioning the visits and exhibitions of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/8036/Glenn-Ligon">Glenn Ligon</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/7016/Cecily-Brown">Cecily Brown</a>, and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/13155/Luisa-Lambri">Luisa Lambri</a>. The latter is also one of the many artists involved in ‘Pompeii Commitment: Archeological Matters’,&nbsp;the first long-term project devoted to contemporary art in Pompeii, curated by former Madre Museum Director Andrea Viliani. ‘Pompeii is now alive again, as a place of inspiration and production,’ says Viliani. ‘It will soon have its own contemporary art collection with some of the artists’ contributions.’&nbsp;

But Naples is not just about art and archeology. ‘In the 1980s and early 1990s, it was the pulsing hub of house and techno music in Italy with Marco Carola, Gaetano Parisio, and Davide Squillace, whose label This and That Lab has collaborated with ten of my gallery’s artists,’ says Giangi Fonti, founder of Galleria Fonti. The music scene was of seminal importance to Fonti, and led him to join&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1547/Galerie-Neu">Galerie Neu</a>&nbsp;in Berlin in 1999. ‘I wanted to delve further into radical music and counterculture,’ he says, ‘and it paved the way to opening my own gallery in Naples in 2004, and representing political artists such as&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/8356/Daniel-Knorr">Daniel Knorr</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/22515/Kiluanji-Kia-Henda">Kiluanji Kia Henda</a>, and Giulia Piscitelli, who will feature in the ‘Panorama’ exhibition with a series of abstract portraits.’ Galleria Fonti has been going strong ever since, acting as both a bridge to the international art scene and as a leading contributor to a rich local ecosystem, which is finally getting the attention it deserves.

Sara Dolfi Agostini is a writer, curator, and academic based between Naples and Malta.&nbsp;All photography by Louis Canadas for Art Basel.

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Steeped in history and propelled by ‘Panorama’, a large-scale exhibition on the island of Procida, Southern Italy is finding its place in the sun

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