Narciso

Nello Petrucci’s sculpture, unveiled at Habita79.

Event · 2026 · Art

An evening devoted to contemporary art in the heart of Pompeii. Habita79 hosted the presentation of Narciso, Nello Petrucci’s new sculpture: a conversation with the artist, the unveiling of the work and a toast among guests and friends of the hotel.

Narciso remains on display in the spaces of Habita79, in dialogue with the hotel’s interiors, conceived as a small private museum where contemporary design meets the memory of Pompeii.

“Between what we see and what we are, there is always a distance.”

Nello Petrucci

The work

Narciso (2026)

He no longer contemplates beauty alone: he seeks confirmation, an identity, perhaps a truth. Yet what he sees is an unstable reflection, a surface that returns the appearance without revealing what lies beyond it.

The sculpture tells of the condition of contemporary man, constantly exposed and yet ever more distant from himself. We live surrounded by images, we build identities to be shown and we entrust the gaze of others with the task of telling us who we are.

The mirror thus becomes a threshold: it can imprison us in appearance or lead us towards a deeper knowledge. This modern Narcissus does not represent vanity alone, but the fragility of a human being who, while he keeps looking at himself, risks no longer recognising who he is.

The artist

Nello Petrucci

Nello Petrucci (1981) is an Italian visual artist and filmmaker. He lives and works between Pompeii and New York. His research unfolds through collage and halftone, languages with which he builds layered images suspended between fragmentation, memory and perceptual tension. His work addresses social, cultural and political themes through a recognisable practice, capable of moving between public space and the inner dimension. Pompeii, a city of layers, memory and the permanence of the image, is a silent matrix of his research: here time becomes visual matter, sediment and trace.

After studying cinematography at N.U.C.T. in Rome and stage design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Naples, he began his career in film, working with directors such as Martin Scorsese, Ari Taub, the Manetti Bros. and Antonio Capuano. In the same years he developed an independent artistic practice, starting from torn film posters later recomposed into new images where memory and the present overlap.

His works have been shown in international institutions and contexts, including the European Parliament in Brussels, the Chamber of Deputies in Rome, the United States Embassy in Italy, the World Trade Center in New York and the Malindi National Museum in Kenya. In 2024 his sculpture La danza dell’abisso was selected for the Grenada Pavilion at the Venice Art Biennale. Among his best-known installations is Plastic River, a monumental whale made of recycled plastic and presented in Pompeii, a reflection on the relationship between human beings, consumption and the environment.

He is the founder and artistic director of the Pompei Street Festival and the creator of Art Helps People, a project through which art becomes a concrete tool for social transformation, giving rise to humanitarian and participatory projects in Africa. Alongside his artistic work he directs short films and documentaries: his film L’ultimo whisky con il cappellaio matto received a Globo d’Oro nomination in 2020. He teaches Film History at IUAD in Naples. He has created urban art interventions in Armenia, Belgium, Egypt, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Kenya, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Spain, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States. His research continues to question the relationship between image, perception and public space, conceiving art as a civil act, an experience of transformation and a space of awareness.

The artist’s website →