Sky and Clouds of the Amazon

The exhibition "Sky and Clouds of the Amazon" at the Arsenal da Esperança in São Paulo was the most beautiful and moving of the many exhibitions we have held in recent years in Brazil and Italy. The "acolhidos," as the people who live miserably on the streets of the Brazilian megalopolis are called at the Arsenal, were amazed by the 18 large photos with quotes from famous people, arranged side by side in three rows, perfectly illuminated on a black wall that accompanies, day and night, the long procession that slowly enters the gigantic Sermig canteen. In the darkness, the dark silhouettes of the street workers pause to observe with attentive eyes, some smiling, others with a serious expression, some showing and commenting on a photo to the person following them in the single file to access the refectory, others lingering too long, provoking protests from those behind...

Let me introduce myself: I'm Oliviero Pluviano, a seventy-three-year-old journalist from Genoa, and for 22 years ANSA's correspondent in Brazil. This exhibition, inaugurated on the evening of April 3, 2025, came about by chance. I wanted to make a 2026 Calendar with photos taken in the twenty years since I've owned the Gaia, a gaiola (cage) as they call the traditional two- or three-decker wooden boats filled with hammocks in the Amazon that ply the rivers of Brazil's green ocean. In 2020, I had already created a calendar featuring the little churches of the Arapiuns (a tributary of the Tapajós River, one of the Amazon's most stunning waterways), written entirely in Nheengatu, the universal language spoken by various Amazonian ethnic groups. Eventually, it ended up in the hands of Pope Francis. But in January, I visited the Arsenal for the first time, following the totems from an exhibition (Nonni do Brasil, on 150 years of Italian emigration to the land of samba) that I had brought on a cruise from Genoa to Santos. Father Simone had kindly agreed to store them in a closet until their departure for Italy. And, passing by that magical black wall with him, he told me that art exhibitions were held there for the benefit of the 1,200 homeless people each day. Then I had the right idea: to create the exhibition in that place of transit, a must-see, which has dizzying attendance rates, for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for a month or two. But I didn't expect such a marked gratitude from the "public," with men stopping me in the streets of this small city that is Arsenal, recognizing me from my photo in the exhibition, patting me on the shoulder, hugging me, asking to take a selfie with them, thanking me for the photos that had fascinated, enraptured, enraptured, enchanted them... For this being the first exhibition I've done at Gaia, I can only say I'm delighted and moved! On the evening of April 3rd, it was raining, and in the darkness, puddles could be seen in the light reflected by the photo panels, only just revealed to the attenhidos when the sheets covering them were removed. The entire evening predicted such a success, with the almost unexpected presence of the Italian Consul, and hundreds of people in the hall/church where André Mehmari, the famous Brazilian Stefano Bollani, offered 40 uninterrupted minutes of his fantastic piano performance free of charge to diplomats and the homeless, entrepreneurs and the illiterate, who were all equally amazed by the music. With a famous saying, Lin Yutang, a Chinese writer and thinker who died in 1976, wisely stated that, if you lose your roof, you gain the stars... and the sky.


NP May 2025
Sermig Fraternity in Brazil