Fogos, Cores, Luzes:
Napoli Explosion comes to Rio.
From 10 December 2025, the Polo Culturale ItaliaNoRio hosted Napoli Explosion – Fogos, Cores, Luzes, curated by the Italian Cultural Institute of Rio de Janeiro as part of the celebrations marking the 2,500th anniversary of the founding of Naples. Twenty photographic works, including several diptychs, together with an 18-minute documentary, introduced Brazilian audiences to the research Mario Amura has been conducting since 2010 into the collective ritual of Neapolitan New Year’s Eve. The Portuguese title, Fogos, Cores, Luzes, does not merely describe what appears in the works: it distils their underlying structure. The fireworks are the real event and the collective gesture from which the project originates; the colours are the material released by photography through exposure time and camera movement; the lights are the shared language through which Naples and Rio entrust New Year’s Eve with a ritual of transformation.
NAPEX 92053, Mario Amura, 2019, Fine Art Print Edition 1/8, 120×80 cm
NAPEX 91211, Mario Amura 2019, Fine Art Print Edition 1/8, 80×120 cm
NAPEX 233052, Mario Amura 2023, Fine Art Print Edition 1/8, 120×80 cm
NAPEX 234135, Mario Amura 2023, Fine Art Print Edition 1/8, 120×80 cm
The proximity of the gaze.
The exhibition presents twenty photographic works in the edition conceived for collectors, on a more intimate scale than the monumental museum configurations adopted in previous exhibitions. Single works are presented in the 80 × 120 cm format, while the diptychs extend the composition horizontally or vertically. This change of scale does not diminish the power of the images, but alters their relationship with the viewer: it invites closer observation, focused on the density of colour, the texture of the marks and the movement of light.
Diptych NAPEX 221038, Mario Amura 2022, Fine Art Print Edition 1/8, 240×80 cm
NAPEX 23349, Mario Amura 2023, Fine Art Print Edition 1/8, 80x120 cm
NAPEX 224064, Mario Amura 2022, Fine Art Print Edition 1/8, 80x120 cm
NAPEX 25391, Mario Amura 2020, Fine Art Print Edition 1/8, 120×80 cm
Diptych NAPEX 24196, Mario Amura 2020, Fine Art Print Edition 1/8, 240×80 cm
Diptych NAPEX 21213, Mario Amura 2020, Fine Art Print Edition 1/8, 160×120 cm. Discover more...
NAPEX 25315, Mario Amura 2020, Fine Art Print Edition 1/8, 80x120 cm
The Brazilian reception of the work.
In Rio, the exhibition encountered an audience that immediately recognised the central role of light, celebration and collective participation in Mario Amura’s work. This response was accompanied by the interpretation of Joaquim Marçal Andrade, a Brazilian historian of photography and graphic arts, who situates Napoli Explosion at the intersection of documentation, abstraction and visual anthropology. Guests included Sueli Voltarelli and Paulo Souza of the CCBB – Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil Rio de Janeiro, as well as the renowned Brazilian painter Luiz Aquila.
Joaquim Marçal Andrade, Brazilian historian of photography and graphic arts
Luiz Aquila, Artist
Sueli Voltarelli e Paulo Souza del CCBB Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil Rio De Janeiro
The Exhibition catalogue.
The exhibition catalogue brings together critical readings of Napoli Explosion by Joaquim Marçal Andrade and Serafino Murri, two observers positioned at opposite ends of the creative process. Andrade approaches the works from a Brazilian perspective and defines them as “abstract-documentary”: images that verge on visual anthropology and expand the very concept of documentary photography. Murri, by contrast, writes from within the crew, evoking the waiting, risk and unpredictability of the night on Monte Faito: “We have to catch the rhythm of the light and dance within it.” Through these two texts, the work emerges both as a document of a collective phenomenon and as a physical experience of time, light and chance. Available to read in full in this section, the catalogue preserves the dual critical perspective born from the encounter between Naples and Rio.
