Negus - Far Eye

The video is part of the broader Negus project, which refers to a historical event that actually occurred at the time of the Italian occupation in Ethiopia. It is 1936 and we are in the town of Vernasca, province of Piacenza, when a wounded soldier is forced to return from the war. On the occasion of his return, the community organizes a festive and dark ritual: the effigy of Haile Selassie I, the last negus of Ethiopia, as well as messiah according to the Rastafarian cult, a religious faith born in those years in Ethiopia and spread to Jamaica. The expression negus then became part of the local jargon, identifying a person with a ridiculous appearance, excessively showy, scruffy and clumsy.

The video designed for the facade and linked to the biography of the artists, originally from Vernasca, takes its cue from this historical fact. Between documentation and typical scenarios of the collective exotic imagination, a kaleidoscope of images alternate on the facade surface. Some moments of the Italian colonial past, linked with the mysterious figure of the negus and the symbolism of the Rastafarian cult, thus find a new, alienating reading. The Negus project had its first exhibition last April Negus at the ar/ge kunst gallery in Bolzano. The collaboration between the two institutions also continues in the new chapter of the Negus project: an artist’s book with texts by Emanuele Guidi and Frida Carazzato, David Katz and Anna Della Subin, published by Humboldt book (en/it/dt).