An homage to Neapolitan song and its communicative power, achieved through the radical act of erasure. The exhibition Canto Napoli by Emilio Isgrò, curated by Eike Schmidt, opens today at the Capodimonte Museum and Royal Park in Naples, and will be on display until September 29, 2026. The project is integrated into the museum’s exhibition path – in rooms 81, 83, and 84 – acting as a contemporary reflection on musical memory and its rewriting, set amidst the masterpieces of the Neapolitan museum’s collection.
Among the most influential figures in Italian conceptual art, Isgrò once again confronts language and its limits, applying his iconic erasure practice to the repertoire of Neapolitan tradition for the first time. Twenty-five musical scores, ranging from ’O sole mio to Voce ’e notte, from Reginella to Napul’è, from ’O surdato ’nnammurato to Malafemmena, undergo a process of subtraction. Through the inverse effect, this subtraction reasserts the significance of the written trace as a form. Words emerge as fragments, remnants, clues to a discourse that the viewer is invited to reconstruct.
«For me, Erasure is a direct descendant of Sicilian-Greek philosophy, a Greekness that also encompasses Naples», explains Isgrò. «It is a continuation of positions, on one hand, from the Sophists – nothing exists, and even if it did, it couldn’t be known – and on the other hand, from Socratic philosophy, which poses constant questions. I place obstacles before Neapolitan song, or before texts and images, to suggest that the public engage in a journey of knowledge».
The musical selection spans nearly two centuries of listening and performance, a repertoire that Isgrò defines as «profoundly democratic», bringing together canonical authors and figures considered minor, without apparent hierarchies. «This new project is born, yes, from an ancient love for Neapolitan song, but also from something more persistent: the desire to restore centrality to the historical dimension. European culture, and therefore Neapolitan culture, is founded on great traditions and art. I believe this serves to make those traditions not only acceptable but necessary and vital for the future», Isgrò elaborates.
«In these times, even Neapolitan artists can be at risk of homogenization, but they rarely succumb, because art is breathed everywhere here. When I hear a street musician playing the mandolin, I don’t see a subculture; rather, I wonder where that music comes from. And the answer is clear: it comes from Pergolesi, from the great tradition of the San Carlo, from Paisiello. As a Sicilian, I cannot forget that those who wanted to study and make music, like Vincenzo Bellini himself, had to go to Naples, to San Pietro a Majella», the artist continues.
Unexpected figures then appear on the surfaces of the erased scores: bees, ants, insects that traverse the scores like mobile signs, as if drawn to the sonic structure that still vibrates beneath the erasure. «Isgrò’s musical bees and ants are emanations of the artist’s mind – notes Eike Schmidt in her curatorial essay – non-pictographic signs, devoid of precise semantic denotations; meta-signs without grammatical function; hyper-signs of multiple and mutually contradictory connotations, much like the erasures themselves. If, however, the erasures simultaneously highlight and conceal the text, covering the words to protect and preserve them, the processions and tangles of insects introduce a dynamic element onto the paper’s surface. Their collective choreography makes evident the social dimension of the song and, in some cases, seems to interpret its character: consider the large swarming masses on the score of Tammurriata nera».
The exhibition unfolds alongside the room dedicated to the Neapolitan nativity scene, creating a dialogue between two layered forms of representation: on one hand, the eighteenth-century figurative tradition, and on the other, a conceptual practice that interrogates the transmission of knowledge and forms. The artworks, created using mixed media on fabric paper mounted on wood, are accompanied by three three-dimensional works: two mandolins and a guitar, also populated by the same organic presence of insects.
The project thus continues in line with the artist’s research, which for over sixty years has used erasure as a critical and cognitive tool that, by introducing obstacles and slowing down the reading process, compels us to engage more deeply with the artwork. «To see, you must lift the veil, making an effort, because art is never entirely easy; it always requires deciphering», in Isgrò’s words.
