Marinella Senatore: When Light Becomes Community
The Exhibition in a Masseria in Puglia
Until September 8, 2026, amid monumental light installations, collective memory, and participation, Marinella Senatore brings her most immersive project to Masseria Torre Maizza. In this interview, the artist reflects on the political role of community, the transformation of public space, and the possibility for art to still create real relationships.
Link to the Italian version on Artribune
There are artists who use light to construct images. And others who use it to construct relationships. In the work of Marinella Senatore, monumental luminous architectures never function merely as spectacular or decorative elements: they become emotional, social, and political devices capable of activating encounters, belonging, and collective memory.
From May 29 to September 8, 2026, the artist presents We Rise By Lifting Others at Masseria Torre Maizza, her first solo exhibition in Puglia, curated by Raffaele Quattrone. Developed for Rocco Forte Hotels, the project transforms the masseria into an immersive journey where six works engage in dialogue with the territory, the tradition of Southern Italian luminarie, and the theme of community.
It is no coincidence that the exhibition originates in Puglia. Here, light still carries a popular memory tied to collective celebrations, public rituals, and squares crossed by people. Senatore takes that language and relocates it within the contemporary without neutralizing its emotional force. Her installations do not celebrate folklore; rather, they attempt to understand how certain cultural forms can still generate real participation in an era dominated by hyper-individualism and digital dematerialization.
We spoke with the artist about it.
Interview with Marinella Senatore
“We Rise By Lifting Others” speaks about solidarity and interdependence. In an increasingly individualistic present, to what extent does this work also emerge as a political and cultural response to our time?
Very much so. I believe that today there is an enormous need to rebuild spaces of real connection between people. We live in a highly fragmented time, where everything often pushes us toward individualism, competition, and hyper-performativity. I continue instead to deeply believe in the transformative power of collective experiences.
We Rise By Lifting Others was not born as a slogan, but as a concrete possibility of being together and supporting one another. For me, art is never separated from social and political life, even when it uses poetic or seemingly festive elements such as luminarie. There is always a reflection on the ways we can construct temporary communities, empathy, listening, and possibilities for participation.
Today, I believe it is almost a radical gesture to create occasions where people can truly meet, without overly rigid hierarchies, and feel part of something.
Bringing a monumental luminous architecture into a masseria in Puglia also means transforming a place of hospitality into a symbolic public space. Were you interested in creating a dialogue between intimacy, territory, and collectivity?
Yes, absolutely. I was very interested in ensuring that the masseria would not simply function as an exhibition venue, but would become a space to be crossed emotionally and collectively.
Puglia has a very strong relationship with ritual, celebration, and light as a social and popular element. For me, luminarie are never merely decorative: they are emotional architectures that alter the perception of space and activate a shared dimension.
I liked the idea that an intimate place, also connected to hospitality and private experience, could open itself to a public and collective dimension, almost becoming a temporary piazza. This is something that often returns in my work: transforming spaces into places of encounter and possibility.
In your work, luminarie seem to move beyond decoration and become emotional and social devices. What interests you about light as a collective language?
Light is an incredibly powerful narrative language that still needs to be explored. Luminarie come from popular traditions, village festivals, processions, and moments of communal celebration.
When I use luminarie, I am not working with nostalgia or folklore, but with the possibility of transforming a popular language into a contemporary device capable of generating emotional and social connections.
Light changes people’s behavior. It creates attraction, proximity, suspension. It almost becomes a collective body. And there is also something political in taking a non-elitist language and bringing it into contemporary art without distorting it.
This exhibition works extensively on the relationship between memory and contemporaneity. What does Puglia represent for you as a living cultural archive beyond folklorism?
Puglia is an incredibly layered territory, crossed by cultures, migrations, rituals, and traditions that continue to transform even today. What interests me is never folklore as a fixed or stereotyped image, but living culture, culture that continues to be inhabited and transformed by people.
For me, memory is not something static: it is a living material that constantly changes through the present. Luminarie themselves are a perfect example of this. They have a very long history, yet they continue to evolve and engage with new contexts, new languages, and new communities.
Your practice has redefined the concept of participation in contemporary art. When did you realize that involving people would become the center of your work?
I think I understood it very early on, almost intuitively. At a certain point, I realized that what truly interested me was creating contexts, physical and emotional spaces for experiences and possibilities of relationship.
The involvement of people has never been for me a decorative or illustrative element. It is the very core of the work. I am interested in what happens between people, in collective energy, in the possibilities for transformation that emerge within a choral context.
To me, it is evident that we are still only at the beginning of a profound reflection on participatory practices. There is still so much to study, write, and build.
With the School of Narrative Dance, you created a non-hierarchical educational model. Do you think art still has the capacity to produce new forms of collective learning today?
Yes, I deeply believe so. Perhaps today more than ever. The School of Narrative Dance was born precisely from the idea that learning can be horizontal, shared, and experiential.
I am not interested in a vertical pedagogy where one person teaches and another passively receives. Art can still create spaces of emancipation and collective awareness, especially at a historical moment in which we are continuously isolated or digitally overstimulated.
Many of your works seem to transform public space into a shared emotional space. How central do the body and physical presence remain in an era dominated by the digital?
For me, they remain absolutely central. I think that after recent years we understand even more clearly how important the body is. Physical presence produces something that digital space cannot completely replace: energy, empathy, vibration, real listening.
In my work, the body is always an archive of memory, emotion, and social and political experience. I am interested in understanding how the body can become a space of collective knowledge and transformation.
Looking at your international career, one has the impression that your work attempts more to create relationships than images. Is this, for you, one of the deepest responsibilities of art today?
The image is extremely important, because it opens visions and creates poetic and aesthetic dimensions that should never be underestimated.
There has often been a misunderstanding surrounding radical participatory practices such as mine, as if the relationship replaced the artwork. In reality, it is exactly the opposite: the artwork is vital. The luminarie, the parades, the collective choreographies, the banners, the texts, the monumental structures: everything emerges from a very precise aesthetic vision.
I am and remain an artist, not a therapist or a full-time activist. What interests me is that the artwork should not remain closed within itself, but should have the capacity to activate something in people.
We live in a time in which images are consumed with enormous speed, often without leaving deep traces behind. I continue instead to believe in the possibility for art to create images that possess emotional and political permanence, connected to a lived experience. Even when a project lasts only a few hours, what happens between people can continue for a very long time.
Savelletri di Fasano // May 29 to September 8
Marinella Senatore – We Rise By Lifting Others
ROCCO FORTE HOTELS – Masseria Torre Maizza – Contrada Coccaro
