The latest work by Ozmo, a long-standing multifaceted visual experimenter who bridges painting and urban muralism, was unveiled on Monday, October 9, in Rome, marking the conclusion of the ninth edition of Restart, the Festival of Anti-Mafia Creativity and Rights, conceived and curated by the daSud association.
Sophia lives on the walls of a school in Lamaro, a working-class neighborhood on the southeastern outskirts, the IIS Enzo Ferrari, which also serves as the operational headquarters of daSud and its socio-educational project.
A personification of wisdom and knowledge, the female figure bears the features of a Greek goddess, to whom the artist entrusts a message addressed to the younger generations.
Ozmo’s Sophia, rendered with his usual painterly quality, is draped in a softly flowing robe, as if borrowed from a classical allegorical representation.
The pixels in which the goddess’s face begins to disintegrate (a recurring stylistic element in the artist’s work) disembody and update the figure, contributing to the ironic, eloquent blend of historical subject matter and contemporary context, the sacredness of the image and its digital transfiguration.
And so, the small icon of the pointing finger, corresponding to the mouse cursor, is a further reference to the present and to the context in which the students themselves experience their relationship with images, with reality, and with education.
Ozmo also engraves the last line of a poem by Danilo Dolci, a sociologist and educator who, between the 1950s and 1970s, in a challenging place like Sicily, fought against the abuses of the mafia and political power, always in defense of the marginalized, the outskirts, the territories, the working-class neighborhoods, and human and civil rights.
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