Francesco Simeti (Palermo, 1968) is an Italian artist who works and lives in New York. He is known for his site-specific installations presenting aesthetically pleasing scenarios which, upon closer inspection, reveal complex contexts. The artist appropriates images taken mainly from newspapers and magazines to problematize the imagery of contemporary society.
He mostly engages in Public Art, which has always played a central role in his artistic practice. In the United States he has worked on projects commissioned by Percent for Art and Public Art for Public Schools in New York, and by the Multnomah council in Oregon and has created permanent installations for the Brooklyn and Chicago subways. In Italy he has collaborated with the Nuovi Committenti programme and, in 2021, for this organization he has presented an installation at Casa Giglio, Turin. His works are featured among the contemporary art collections of Fondazione Luigi Rovati, Milan; the Museo of Novecento, Milan; the Victoria & Albert Museum, London; the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
In Italy he is represented by the Francesca Minini gallery.
The project Simeti has created for MAO is called Gigli, cinghiali, qualche carpa e poi conigli, galline e asini in gran quantità (Lilies, wild boars, a few carps and then rabbits, chickens and donkeys in large quantities) and constitutes the first stage of a larger project developed throughout his two-year residency at the museum (2023-2024). With this intervention, both the artist and the museum have promoted a connection with an important social reality of the city, Casa Giglio, a non-profit organization which offers free hospitality to families withour means with hospitalized children at Regina Margherita hospital.
The title is reminiscent of old nursery-rhymes, addressed to the young residents of Casa Giglio for whom the work was initially intended as a fantastic scenery in which they could immerse themselves.
The work was presented at MAO and located in the reception area as a welcoming for visitors to introduce them to the museum experience and as a way to open up to the entire urban community, a sort of fantastic scenery where iconographic traditions from different times and cultures, different animal and vegetal speces meet.
