HYBRIS

Mare Omnis. De Hybris et Mensura is a diffuse, site-specific installation that runs through the historic center of San Lucido, insinuating itself into the urban space as an intermittent presence—at once familiar and foreign. The works are not concentrated in a single exhibition venue, butscattered along an itinerary that unfolds over time and through movement, entrusted to the gaze and the body of those who live in and pass through the town.

The project stems from the desire to engage not only the festival’s specialized audience, but also—and above all—“ordinary” people: residents, passersby, summer tourists. The works appear as unexpected bodies within the fabric of everyday life, elements that interrupt habit and ask to be read, traversed, and brought into relation.

The installation engages in dialogue with symbolic places in the town: an entrance door, a bastion overlooking the sea horizon, alleys and small squares, a church, and finally an enclosed, intimate space dedicated to a projection. Each intervention is conceived in relation to the physical and symbolic context that hosts it, and contributes to a fragmented narrative that the viewer is invited to reconstruct.

At the conceptual core of the project lies the relationship between human beings and nature, here metaphorically expressed through the ancient practice of bluefin tuna fishing using the tonnara. A millennia-old practice, now vanished from this territory but still alive in collective memory, conceived according to a logic of measure, respect, and responsibility. A system that feared excess—Hybris—as a fault capable of breaking the balance between humans, nature, and the divine.

The tuna, the fisherman, and the net thus become symbolic figures: images that traverse history, religion, and economy. The fish has been a sign of recognition for a clandestine and persecuted community; fishermen have served as a metaphor for a possible transformation, grounded in shared values rather than profit. In this work, they re-emerge as paradoxical yet necessary presences, capable of reminding us that another relationship with the world has been possible—and perhaps it still can be.

The photographic works, all in black and white, contrast with the final short film, in color, creating a temporal and perceptual tension. Some interventions are conceived to endure beyond the duration of the festival, leaving behind a trace, a sedimentation, a residue within the territory. Nothing is explained in a didactic manner: the ultimate meaning of the installation is constructed only through an active effort of reading, attention, and responsibility.

Like the tonnara, this installation is also a complex structure: it does not capture, but holds; it does not impose, but connects. It asks for time, measure, and listening—and entrusts the viewer with the choice of whether to cross it, or remain on the surface.

Text by Francesco Zizola