Presented on the 2nd of December 2023, the work 'Damasa' by Gian Maria Tosatti, a permanent installation set up in room 82 of the Reggia, acquired in the collection thanks to the support of PAC 2022-2023 - Plan for Contemporary Art, promoted by the General Directorate of Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture.

Created and exhibited in Naples for the first time in 2017, Damasa is the environmental installation conceived as the soul's home of Anna Maria Ortese, the main author that the city had in its literary twentieth century. The title of the work derives from the name the writer gave to one of the characters in the experimental novel Il porto di Toledo, in which we recognize her alter ego.

In accordance with the artist's wish not to exhibit the work far from Naples, Sylvain Bellenger, in the dual role of Director of the Capodimonte Museum and curator of the project, has dedicated room 82, on the second floor of the Reggia, to the permanent exhibition of the installation, returning a real and at the same time visionary space to the writer and breaking the exile that has long relegated Ortese, who died in solitude hundreds of kilometers away, still dreaming of her city.

Thanks to this acquisition, Damasa finds its chosen abode in one of the museum rooms significantly overlooking the port, located in continuity with the Contemporary Art Section, along the exhibition path dedicated to the seventeenth century.

On the occasion of the presentation of Damasa, a work dedicated to Anna Maria Ortese, sculptures were exhibited at the entrance of the room: Levriera che allatta i cagnolini (1839) and Gesù Nazareno (before 1857), linked to the production of the sculptor Giuseppe Vaccà, maternal grandfather of the Neapolitan writer, often evoked in her pages.