Considerable example of an environment linked to the development and transformation of the environment, in a specific territory, is the project that sees the birth and establishment of the MAE Open - open-air museum - in the ancient village of Zumpano, conceived and directed by the critic and art historian Gianluca Covelli in support of a further and possible development of contemporary culture, in a place where sculptural works come into close relationship with the historical testimonies of the past. The ancient village already included in the BAI - Authentic Villages of Italy - associative circuit presents relevant historical-artistic evidence of the foreground highlighted by the important redevelopment works of the area surrounding the fifteenth-century cult building, which return to the inhabited center a new place of meeting and entertainment, Piazza Salvo D'Acquisto, in addition to the Museum of Sacred Art housed inside the Canonical House built in the sixteenth century by the Rector of Zumpano Tommaso Telesio, brother of the philosopher, later bishop of Cosenza.
The MAE Open - open-air museum - is enlivened in the first edition of the TERRAĒ project by the pertinent presence of the public work by Ivana Ferraro, entitled Free your dreams - NGC 12, 2019, a sculpture that reproduces a monumental pinwheel inscribed in a circle inscribed in a square. Harmony, order and proportion are the basis of the founding concept of the work which fully reflects the project of the exhibition park en plein air, from which comes a strong vitalistic energy created by direct confrontation with the temporal and spatial dimension. Following are the interventions of the artistic duo formed by Vincenzo Brandi and Francesca Romana Tessadri with the permanent installation of two monumental plastic works entitled The tree of memory, 2019, and Progression, 2019, both made with arc-welded soft iron and painted purple red to clearly differentiate them from the surrounding environment in fully restoring the strong energy that comes from nature. The latest installation are two works by the sculptor Jano Sicura, two artist benches, which proposes the theme of Violence against women, placed on the sides of the fountain in the central Piazza San Giorgio Martire. A theme that is far from easy to approach that of Violence against women as well as the more general one of Gender Violence, is tackled by the artist also following the most frequent and recognizable symbolism such as the color red, chosen as an emblem, in addition to the classic women's shoe with heel. The red bench, in fact, wants to represent the "place no longer occupied" by a woman victim of femicide, as a tangible sign placed in a public space, a symbol of an absence in society caused by violence; focusing all the attention of public opinion on this highly topical issue.
The open-air museum, in the ancient village, has made it possible to carry out a double cultural operation by bringing the ancient vestiges of the past to the center of the action together with contemporary research that is consciously grafted onto the territory, creating new developments and visual paths as well as new ones. suggestions. The sculpture enters into a direct relationship with history giving life to a permanent exhibition conceived for the place that takes on exclusive characteristics, hardly comparable to other exhibition experiences. In this case, contemporary plastic research carries out a regenerative action destined to create a profound transformation in the perception of space and time, motivating an unprecedented process of training and urban redevelopment, represented by a precise identity reality for a place and a territory in step. with the times of the contemporary.