Isravele [previously known as Israele], L’eremo e la via santa [the Hermitage and the Holy Way]

In 1996, Isravele – his assumed name – decided to leave his family and home in the Zen district of Palermo in order to retire to the top of Mount Gallo. There he occupied an abandoned military lighthouse and turned it into a personal sanctuary. He built a small altar inside and decorated the interior walls, floors, and ceilings with geometric and abstract figures, perfectly harmonizing these images with mystical concepts. He used paints, concrete, sea-washed pebbles, and stones, to which he added newspaper clippings and devotional images in a continuous work-in-progress. The decorations on the hexagonal tower of the building and the exterior walls are particularly impressive.

The hermit also has worked on the landscape and has created a path leading to the shrine, with scattered artistic interventions; he describes it as a Via Santa, a Holy Way, and conceives of it similarly to an initiation path.

~Emanuela Iovino

www.costruttoridibabele.net



Palermo, Sicilia, 90134 it
Latitude/Longitude: 38.115688 / 13.361267

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