Pistoletto revisits his works from a disability perspective

Michelangelo Pistoletto is the artist behind Casa Italia in Paris. At Pré Catelan, in the Bois de Boulogne, athletes, coaches and fans will gather to celebrate and talk about sport every evening until 8 September. The master, who had already collaborated with Casa Italia at the 2006 Turin Games, has chosen to revisit some of his most famous works, the Third Paradise, the Mirror Paintings, the Newspaper Spheres, in a Paralympic key, thinking of the claim Phisique du role and says: "The Spheres, a work from the 1960s, contain chips that emit sounds and become perceptible even to people with visual disabilities; the four Mirror Paintings embody some of the athletes of Paralympic Italy".

A great source of inspiration for this sensitivity towards disability comes to Pistoletto from Jean Bassmaji: 'He is a Syrian cardiologist who has lived in Italy for sixty years and whose association AMAR Costruire Solidarietà, founded in 2017 in Reggio Emilia, is well known to me'. Bassmaji, with Faenza entrepreneur Massimo Moretti, who produces 3D printers, brought three printers with which they make 3D prostheses to the University of Damascus, after engineering students had come to Italy for training. They work mainly for children who, as they grow up, need to change their prostheses often. It is an important story of solidarity that has grown over the years and which Giacomo, Dr Bassmaji's son, remembers this way: 'In July 2019, the first AMAR 3DMed was inaugurated, a workshop for the construction of mechanical prostheses of upper limbs at the Faculty of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering at Damascus University. The workshop has a capacity to produce 500 prostheses per year, but the shortage of continuous electricity limits the activity to 230 prostheses per year, distributed free of charge, to everyone, without limitations or constraints related to religious beliefs, political affiliations or other limitations."

AMAR's dream, despite the war, continues and, a year ago, the second AMAR 3DMed Lab was inaugurated at the Faculty of Mechatronic Engineering at the University of Aleppo. The research team developed the project, leading to the realisation of an electromechanical prosthesis capable of lifting 3.5 kilos, equipped with a closing and rotating hand movement, with anatomical aesthetics thanks to the use of a silicone epidermis. Where the human heart reaches, it can create oases of good.