Due South

Due South is an artistic exchange and exhibition exploring Sicily. The second in a quartet of island-based investigations initiated by Marianne Bernstein, Due South brings together works by thirty-eight American, Italian/Sicilian, and International artists who have created works from both insider and outsider perspectives. Due North, produced in 2017, explored Iceland.

Independent curator Marianne Bernstein is pleased to announce Due South, the second project in a quartet of island-based explorations, highlighting an international exchange and exhibition between American and Italian artists. Due North focused on Iceland, and Due South on Sicily. This project is an international first, an opportunity to start a cultural and artistic dialogue between America and Sicily.

Our fascination with Sicily evolved organically when a participating artist, Serena Perrone, in Due North began to make striking parallels between Iceland and her native country. Like Iceland, Sicily’s culture is rooted in an epic, volcanic landscape and diverse cultural history as an island shaped by conquering cultures. The curatorial vision for Due South crystallized around southern Italians’ unique relationship to their tumultuous landscape through tradition, agriculture, and myth. Most importantly, the greater Philadelphia region has a unique tie to Sicily with the majority of its rich Italian-American community tracing their heritage to this Mediterranean island.

Due South is a culmination of three years of artistic research, with leading American artists traveling and completing residencies in Sicily while beginning dialogues with their Italian contemporaries. Select Italians have been invited to travel to the US to complete installations and works on site. Participating artists were committed to making work in the social sphere and through interactions with communities and histories unique to Sicily. Important to this exploration are the difficult integration of a rich past and an ever-infiltrating technological present, extremes in history and weather, and the contradictions between a seductive landscape and its inherent Mediterranean challenges. These are pressing dichotomies for the contemporary globalized moment as we try to examine history, heritage, tradition, and the evolution of a place.