Rosalba Branà from Polignano a Mare (BA)

We are dealing with a new time and space. What he is discovering or rediscovering about himself?
Living 24 hours on 24 in the world of art, these days I am so to speak “holding on” to a work that has often come to mind: Dance at Henry Matisse, a hymn to the joy of living, a simple circle but capable of expressing strength and sharing a hope, a work without borders, nor peoples, only humanity according to a phrase attributed to Matisse himself.

Museums and galleries have reacted to the moment with digitalization and virtuality. What are his "strategies" to establish new relationships?
We have created a site parallel to the existing institutional one, museovirtualepinopascali.it which will accompany the exhibitions “real” at our Museum, they are not the same exhibitions made virtual, but products specifically for the web. The exhibition curated by me, Room with a view, it was our first virtual proposal and born from the contingency of the Pino Pascali Museum closed due to known health needs. How the art community reacts? How artists experience discomfort and homelessness within the home? We started by asking 14 Apulian photographers since photography is certainly the most immediate and most emotional language that can record and amplify the mood that, in a more or less strong way, grips us. In the words of Susan Sontag, photography, especially right now, it is lived as a memento mori, in the sense that taking a picture of the reality seen today means participating in vulnerability, to the mutability of people and things.
The authors, all from Puglia, invited to the exhibition use photographic language as an antibody, a painkiller to create a single story in images of the new daily life we ​​are living. They are the ones who highlight things that escape us, details, memories, past and present memories. While the future is uncertain and left in the dark.
This virtual review of ours has met with great success with critics and audiences at an international level, so much so that from many parts of the world, Israel, Morocco, Australia, many photographers have sent us more photographs and soon you will be able to see the exhibition on the site Room with international view so as to make an interaction of contacts by establishing new relationships that, we hope, may also continue in our future proposals. The site is always available.

How do you imagine the world, when everything will start again?
Today we live in an emergency situation but we must also be able to grasp new stimuli from this tragedy and one is precisely that of having to implement the virtual part, a contemporary art museum has an advantage on this, as artists rely on, more and more, to experiment with new intangible ways and this will help to reach an ever wider audience. I believe that the current difficult moment will see us winners, champions of new experiments and visual practices that will never be the same.

Rosalba Branà was born in Altamura (Bari). She completed her high school studies in Bari and subsequently enrolled at the University where she graduated in Philosophy with a thesis on the latest trends in contemporary art. For a few years he taught art history in the city of Parma and then moved permanently to Bari. She has always been involved in contemporary art.
From 1987 to the 2001 she is director of the Zelig Contemporary Art Gallery based in Bari and Polignano.
At the same time since 1992 begins to actively deal with the artist Pino Pascali, establishing an international exhibition dedicated to him by the title Return to the sea. Tribute to Pino Pascali which is held every summer in a small village of Pescatori in Polignano and in which they participate in about five years of construction 80 internationally renowned contemporary artists.
From the collaboration with the Municipality of Polignano, with the Province of Bari, with the Puglia Region following the success of the annual review Return to the sea. Tribute to Pino Pascali, she works on the project to establish a civic museum in the town of Polignano dedicated to Pascali and of which she becomes director. Collects, archives, keeps and settles the donation that Pino Pascali's parents had donated to the Municipality of Polignano. The first seat of the Municipal Museum is a small building, former female monastery, in the historic center.
Rosalba Branà resumes the Pino Pascali Award interrupted in 1969 and with the support of the Region, of the Province and the Municipality of Polignano that, in few years, becomes one of the most important honors in Italy. At the behest of the Region, the Pino Pascali Municipal Museum is transformed into a Foundation owned by the Region and the Municipality in 2011, and still represents the only public institution of contemporary art in the Region. In 2013 the Pino Pascali Foundation receives a prestigious national award as the best Foundation of the year.
Among the latest projects: The Venice Biennale, 2019, with the exhibition Pino Pascali. From the image to the shape and the Pino Pascali Award 2019, with the personal exhibition to the artist ZHANG HUAN. www.museopinopascali.it