NAPLES -- A local project that intends to accomplish a mural in commemoration of Giancarlo Siani, a young reporter brutally gunned down just outside his home, now has international support.

 Famous journalist and author of international bestseller Gomorrah, Roberto Saviano publically endorsed and sustained the Naples initiative “A Mural for Giancarlo Siani” just days ago.

 In a Facebook post linked to his article provocatively entitled “Why we pee on symbolic places that should be considered sacred for the memory of those who have given their lives,” the journalist makes reference to the initiative and explains that respect begins with culture.

 Promoting the mural to be stencilled, Saviano nonetheless admonishes “the big war against organised crime will remain a losing battle until the streets and squares of Camorra victims are recognised in memory of those who have sacrificed their lives in the fight against it.” He goes on to declare: “With legal authorities in the forefront, places like Giancarlo’s street must be symbols in a city that strives to turn over a new leaf without ever forgetting.”

 Although there’s still much to be done, the notorious Neapolitan’s endorsement emphasizes that similar battles, like the creation of a mural for such a young and dedicated journalist much like Saviano himself, become in themselves fundamental cultural expressions that speak out clearly against illegality.

 The idea of a mural in Giancarlo Siani’s honour starts in early 2016 with a group of citizens from his neighbourhood who notice the abandoned and degraded state of the very place where the young man was brutally assassinated by the Camorra on September 23, 1985.

 In an attempt to bring dignity back to his memory and honour his fight against criminality, the group first creates a Facebook page and then involves local organization INWARD, Observatory on Urban Creativity,already known for orchestrating Jorit’s gargantuous San Gennaro at the doors of the Forcella quarter and busy with the re-appreciation of eastern Naples - Ponticelli area in Parco Merola, now generally known as Mural Park.

 Brainstorming on how to keep his memory alive, “A mural for Giancarlo” is thus born and a collective financial campaign on DeRev platform begins June 30, publically involving the community in the crowdfunding.

 For the 31^st anniversary of the journalist’s death, INWARD intends to create a mural that remembers the life of the Neapolitan journalist killed by the Camorra. 

 Giancarlo Siani was a young Neapolitan stringer who worked for Il Mattino at their field office in Torre Annunziata just outside Naples. Through hard words, he showed his condemnation against organised crime and its illegal acts.

 In what some reporters today declare as the ‘Siani Method’ that continues to inspire journalists, not only did he report by discovering and thoroughly checking facts, but also by telling the whole truth against an imprisoning criminal world.

 The young journalist challenged his community with honesty and sacrifice by writing insatiably about the links between organised crime, politicians and construction contracts where codes of silence have always been rampant.

 A few days after turning 26, while he was in the process of putting together a dossier on local clans, he was executed. An assassination squad of at least two men shot him ten times in the head just after parking his Mehari at 9pm in front of his Vomero home.

 The mural will be painted in via Vincenzo Romaniello, just opposite the building where Giancarlo was born and raised and where he brutally lost his life.

 The Roman duo Wally and Alita, known in art as Orticanoodles, have been chosen to stencil the work estimated to reach 40 meters in length and roughly cover a total of 100 sq. meters of the urban wall.

 As real maestros in the world of urban painting, their experience started in their laboratory located in the Ortica District in Milan with handmade poster painting. In a unique and refined professional technique of stencil on stencil, they later moved onto the neighbourhood streets. Depicting famous leaders, icons and artists together with overlapping of effective words creating a continuous relationship between subject and message, they have now become known all over Italy and internationally.

 “The story Giancarlo didn’t make it in time to write can be written by us,” declares Orticanoodles on their social network page, adding: “We can start by drawing it.”

 The artists’ idea is to use the wall as a bridge, conceptually passing from a construction that separates to another that connects.

 Using images on walls characteristically intertwined with texts, observers are invited to read and discover their works from different distances and perspectives, revealing something new each time. The different visions “is for us a metaphor of how some phenomena and social motors are incomprehensible when isolated from their entire originating context yet appear as maps of dynamics in progress when observed as a whole,” says Wally.

 As with many of the commissioned walls around the Parthenope city, this new addition “will not necessarily radically change or purify the neighbourhood,” continues the artist, “but it will undoubtedly become an inseparable component to the lives of those in the area, simply bettering the quality of life through a process of stimulation.”

 “Our work aims to include and not exclude so people don’t feel any shortcomings. Citizens should feel they posses the codes necessary to decipher a mural, thus recognising it, comparing themselves to it and even seeing themselves in it,” concludes Orticanoodles.

 The actual work on the wall is scheduled to begin September 19 in celebration of Giancarlo’s Birthday and its completion is due September 23, marking the 31^st Anniversary of his barbaric death.

 For those interested in supporting the project, donations can be made at https://www.derev.com/un-murale-per-giancarlo-siani.

 Please visit the public group on Facebook: Un fiore per Giancarlo.

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