O PIPPA WHERE ART THOU?
SOLO EXHIBITION AT YAPİ KREDİ CC

MARCH 25 - APRIL 14, 2013

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It may look like a scene from a fairy tale.  In a beautiful landscape poplar trees are greeting the new day. A joyful bride is leaping forward, with a wedding bouquet in her hand. But she is never landing. This is where the time stops for her.  She is Pippa Bacca. She was raped and killed near Istanbul.

 

Known as Pippa to her friends, Giuseppina Pasqualino di Marineo (1974-2008) was an Italian performance artist who was hitch-hiking from Italy to the Middle East to carry a message of peace. She believed in people and trusted them. She thought that in the world there are more positive than negative people, and it was right to be trusting. She did not know that the ride she accepted sixty kilometers east of Istanbul, on the 31st of March 2008,  would be her last. She was wearing a white wedding dress. Her body was found eleven days later. The killing had stirred widespread anger and grief both in Turkey and in Italy.

 

On the fifth anniversary of this tragic event, Ali Cabbar created an installation combining two works, a painting and a neon, based on a sketch he had done five years ago. The neon work says, "O Pippa, where art thou?" in Turkish. It is shown at the window of Yapi Kredi Culture and Art Center, on the most crowded street in Istanbul, as a memorial to Pippa Bacca, to show that she is not forgotten and her loss does still hurt.