The end-of-residence exhibition of the Ukrainian artist Anastasiia Kolibaba (Odessa, 1994) will open on Thursday 21 July at 6.30 pm , open until August 31st at the Cavallerizza of Palazzo Sant'Elia . The first residency program for Italian and international artists of the Sant'Elia Foundation, curated by Giusi Diana, created in collaboration with the Metropolitan City of Palermo , is aimed at encouraging the international mobility of artists and enhancing the most current expressions of art Contemporary.

In the eighteenth-century former Cavallerizza of Palazzo Sant'Elia , a space with three naves characterized by elegant gray columns in Billiemi stone and cross vaults, a series of oil paintings on canvas, a series of sculptures in raw clay and a pictorial and object installation. All the works, except in one case, were created by Anastasiia Kolibaba in Palermo, at the invitation of the Sant'Elia Foundation, during the artistic and humanitarian residency, following the Russian invasion in Ukrainian territory on February 24 of this year. ; hence the date indicated in the title of the exhibition, conceived by the artist in his new, alienating and surreal condition (the abbreviation SUR in the title) as an exile due to the war.

The Metropolitan Mayor Prof. Roberto Lagalla declares: "It is with great pleasure that the Metropolitan City of Palermo has contributed, in collaboration with the Sant'Elia Foundation, to the realization of this exhibition, hosted in the Cavallerizza of Palazzo Sant'Elia. Ukrainian artist Anastasia Kolibaba was hosted in residence in Palermo during these terrible months that her country is experiencing, and the exhibition at the end of the residence is the story of the tragic times we are living ". Kolibaba declares "The exhibition represents for me a study of the impact of war on socio-cultural processes and on the change in the perception of the image of the world, both on a personal and social level, when the awareness of one's own mortality, animal fear, the will to survive forces us to make radical changes, blurring the boundary between metaphor and reality. I observe the return of symbols and images from a primitive, apparently forgotten past "