Ri(vis)ti is an innovative Program Hosted Inside Ottaviano’s Traditional Rite of Festa di San Michele. This program was developed by Giovanni Ambrosio for Vesuvio Adventures, a local cultural association, who has a passion for integrating innovation with tradition
As part of the Ri(vis)ti program for the Festa di San Michele in Ottaviano, I created a visual and editorial project focused on the meanings of the ritual and its signs. The work was developed for the deconsecrated church of Ave Gratia Plena, temporarily reopened to the public during the 2024 and 2025 editions of the festival. At the heart of the project is a series of medium-scale panels that investigate the symbolic and historical layers of the Volo degli Angeli, the figure of the Archangel, and the local spring ritual. Through a visual grammar blending classical iconography, historical photography, and editorial clarity, the panels explored how ritual forms take shape, persist, and transform. In 2025, the installation was re-presented along with a sound performance by Tommaso Nudo (I Suoni del Rito), and a poster campaign designed for digital circulation, reinforcing the dialogue between memory, space, and visual thought.
Ri(vis)ti was meticulously written to enhance the experience of the Festa di San Michele attendees and to enhance a previous installation called Il Monumento Desiderato. The installation reconstructed a space of reflection: not a spectacle of faith, but a critical and poetic encounter with the tradition. The panels offered visitors a dual narrative—on the history of the church itself, usually closed to the public, and on the broader religious and cultural meanings of the rite, interpreted through imagery, fragments, and timelines. By reactivating a marginal, often overlooked space, the project proposed a different way of seeing: not from above or from within the crowd, but from a threshold, from the side, through design.
