I studied law because I saw in justice an instrument of democracy with which to aim for an equal condition for all. I believed in very practical ways, that law could give the possibilities to achieve, through dialogue and through processes of negotiation and mediation, a justice based on mutuality and shared interests. I wanted to be a part of a process to better the conditions of those who each day I saw living in neglect, separated and in conflict with each other, and I believed that a fair, free and open system of justice was a necessary condition of a democratic society. It was of course idealistic and inevitably naive but even if I speak now from experience I would hold even more strongly to these principles. 

I could not find the way in the practice of law to escape the confinement of its compromises, half -truths, it’s partiality and the corruption of its great ideals. I could not find the way through the daily accommodation with skewed ethics and provisional truths. I could not get past the mundane reality of its everyday, where even small victories for truth felt like defeats in the face of a society answering to those who sought to use law to serve their own interests and not those of all, not those of the weak as well as of the powerful. This was my failing. By the standards of the status quo I was an effective lawyer in my understanding and practice of the law, even a good lawyer in my field. But it was a work that over time had a corrosive effect on my sense of purpose for the good.

I took a life changing step, I left the law and set up an art production group focused on the development of engaged social projects and work with communities in Naples: the most well-known of these was the project of almost a decade with the artist Craigie Horsfield, the theorization of which has been widely published, and work from which has been exhibited through Europe. I was then curatorial fellow at the Whitney Independent Study Program and after that moved to be guest researcher at the MacBa. I continue to work with artists, curators and engaged theorists in Italy, Spain and in the US, as an independent curator and producer, I write for artist catalogues and arts journals. My first book is due to be published in late 2020: it is about the origins and evolution of social projects in Contemporary Art.