Arabian Suite

This installation unfolds within the Arabian Suite of the Bertolini Hotel in Naples, a remarkable architectural environment designed in 1890 by the architect Lamont Young.

Inserted into this richly layered Moorish interior are the sculptural works titled Fragments, in which form and matter are held in a delicate equilibrium. Wood, lime mortar, and pigments are employed not merely as materials, but as carriers of memory — evoking sedimented pictorial structures embedded within collective imagination.

Each element, approximately 220 × 140 × 20 cm, operates as both object and trace: a fragment that suggests a larger, invisible continuity between painting, sculpture, and architectural space.

Rather than imposing itself upon the historical environment, the installation enters into resonance with it — activating a dialogue between past and present, surface and structure, ornament and perception.

The intervention subtly repositions the suite as a perceptual field, where the decorative becomes conceptual, and where material presence reveals latent symbolic depth.

Lamont Young (1851–1929), architect and urban planner of Scottish and Indian descent, developed a visionary approach to the city of Naples, blending speculative urban design with highly distinctive architectural forms. His projects, including Parco Grifeo, Villa Ebe, and the unrealized “Venice District,” reveal a conception of space as both functional and imaginative.

Within this context, the Arabian Suite becomes more than a historical interior: it transforms into a site where architecture, memory, and artistic intervention converge.