Craft and tradition in Sardinia, the wooden angels of Ignazio Mura

Not far from my hometown lies the sunny city of Oristano, in central Sardinia. The town and its neighbouring villages (like pretty much the whole island) abound with artisans and little known crafts.

Yesterday I was ambling about Oristano, enjoying the first springtime sun, and ended up in a tiny, messy, quirky workshop. I couldn't restrain myself from entering, and this is how I met Ignazio, the owner and undisputed king of that wooden realm.

With the company of two black cats, Ignazio spends his days carving lithesome figures out of tree trunks. "This is an angel taking out a soul from purgatory," he told me while carrying on with his latest work. All I can see around me is wooden sculptures recalling the typical Sardinian stone art, wistful faces similar to the Mamuthones masks I had seen in Mamoiada.

"Do you do exhibitions?" I ask him, to realise only later how naive my question is.

"I'd love to," he replies with a bittersweet smile. It seems like it's the question he's waiting for. "I used to participate in collective exhibitions," he starts telling. "In the Aragonese Tower of Torregrande, in Oristano's beach."

I know the place, tourist-packed in summer time, beautiful surrounding, the best spot for an art exhibition. I feel I've been away from home for too long and somehow lost touch with the news that concern my once small world. So I keep provoking him: "And what happened? Why do you not do it anymore?"

"Well," he keeps on, "the Tower has been privatised, and all public exhibitions ended. It's such a shame, people loved them, and my sculptures were at the very end of the stairs, the best display corner. I've even asked the council if they had some place I could use, and you can see how it ended: I don't even have electricity here."

Ignazio works only until the sun shines, during the summer he's quite lucky, but winter time it's tough: he underwent eye surgery so now he must be careful and avoid working if lighting is not good. He has overcome a three-month coma ten years ago, and since then he's been working as a wood artisan.

Throughout our little conversation he hasn't stopped working and studying the shape peeping out of the wood, and while I watch him, I keep thinking that my hopes that the waves of privatisation hadn't reach Sardinian inland villages are slowly slipping away.

Always more things are being marketed, always less activities for human edification are being carried out for the pure sake of doing it.

It's getting late, I have to leave, I congratulate him once again for the great job he's doing. "I don't know," he smiles. "They say it's art."

"It is art," I reply, with the promise to come back before I leave Sardinia in July.

Italy and women's body

Italy is home to beautiful peintures and sculptures, countless scientific discoveries came out from Italian minds, the creativity of Italian people is renowned and museums all over the world are studded with Italian masterpieces. So what’s happening to the Belpaese cultural scene?

I’ve been living outside Italy for four years now, in London for two, I’ve travelled throughout Europe and South America and, although I deem other societies by no means faultless, I have never found in any country such a poor mainstream culture.

Without going as far as Michelangelo’s times, only watching tv shows broadcast in the ‘60s in the Italian tv, it’s possible to appreciate the difference between then and now. Today’s shows are embarrassing: dancers can’t dance, singers are mediocre, shows are not challenging or educative, anchormen (and women) only work if surrounded by semi-naked young girls who, by accepting to be humiliated the way they are, show zero self-esteem.

One of the most astonishing aspects of today’s Italian culture is that a talented person must be physically attractive, otherwise they have no chance to emerge and carry on with the future they have studied for. Yes, studied, because unfortunately this principle seems to apply to tv shows as well as the Parliament, recently become house of any sort of showgirl.

This, far from ensuring high quality programmes, is undermining Italian cultural vivacity and society, and is aimed at causing general mental laziness. This video introduces very well the topic of how women’s body is used to attract audience.

I don’t want to give the wrong impression that this is Italy today: this is mainstream, national media in Italy today. I have lived in Rome for seven years and, while the tv (public and private) was already leading towards the current widespread ignorance, all throughout the city there were many exhibitions, independent theatre pieces, challenging open-air shows and concerts going on.

The main difference with national tv is that these kinds of artistic expressions require mental vivacity, active participation, going out and socialising, using all senses instead of passively staring at the nothing the tv gives us today.