Summary:
- Piazza Duomo hosts a large public photography installation featuring over two thousand portraits of local residents.
- The collaborative project belongs to French artist JR's global Inside Out initiative and aligns with the city's designation as the Italian Capital of Culture 2026.
- A special opening event features photographic projections on building facades alongside an original musical score.
You find a public art installation in Piazza Duomo from July 11 to July 15. This exhibition features massive black and white portraits representing more than two thousand residents from the regional capital and thirteen surrounding municipalities. Your tour of the participating towns includes Barisciano, Calascio, Campotosto, Castel del Monte, Fontecchio, Fossa, Ocre, Pizzoli, Poggio Picenze, Santo Stefano di Sessanio, Scoppito, Tornimparte, and Villa Sant’Angelo. These locations all experienced the effects of the 2009 earthquake.
The display forms part of the official program for L'Aquila Italian Capital of Culture 2026, an initiative backed by the local municipality. French artist JR initiated this specific chapter of his global project, Inside Out – The People's Art Project. ArtsFor managed the local production by organizing specialized photography studios during June. Residents visited these locations to contribute their faces and personal histories to the collective visual archive.
Piazza Duomo functions as an open-air gallery where large posters cover the ground and surrounding architecture. Your experience of the space shifts during an evening event on Saturday, July 11, running from 22:00 to midnight, introducing a combination of light and sound. Projections cover the building facades with the black and white citizen portraits and behind-the-scenes footage from the photographic sessions. An original musical score accompanies these visual displays.
This participatory action belongs to the broader L'Aquila città territorio program, which receives funding from the ReStart development framework via the Municipality of L'Aquila. The initiative aims to support social cohesion and highlight the identity of rural inland areas through public cultural engagement. JR originally established the Inside Out platform in 2011 following a TED Prize win. The platform has expanded into a global movement encompassing over three thousand community actions across 154 countries, accumulating more than 590,000 portraits globally.
Mayor Pierluigi Biondi stated the installation captures the core objective of the cultural capital designation. Biondi noted the visual display connects the main urban center with the surrounding earthquake-affected municipalities, framing the shared history and future regional identity. The temporary transformation of Piazza Duomo reclaims public space through large-scale photography.
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