Manifesto

Baci Sospesi · Barbara Sbrocca · 2025

Equality at birth

At birth, we are all equal: human. We share the same beginning, the same ability to relate, to shape our identity through exchange, the same capacity to imagine. This is why the symbolic installations of the project are always placed near moving water – be it sea, river, lake, or fountain. Water that unites, and never divides.

Relationship and separation

To know how to relate is also to know how to separate. Baci Sospesi is a project about healthy human connections, and recognizes separation as a dynamic just as necessary as encounter.

Like in breathing: if I don’t exhale, I cannot inhale again. The human relationship is an evolving dance: an ongoing movement to and from, able to meet without possessing, to leave without erasing, to find one another anew, or say goodbye – without fear.

Solidarity means wholeness

Baci Sospesi carries within it the original meaning of solidus: whole. An invitation to seek what makes us part of an intimately connected whole, a challenge to resist the fragmentation that wants us isolated and hostile. We are relationship – and within relationship, we cultivate our humanity.

The concept of “sospeso” (suspended)

Sospeso here means exposed, extended, offered. Like the “suspended coffee” tradition in Naples.

It is something given without guarantee of return, something released so that someone else might catch it. A gesture that recognizes the other as similar, within the same human capacity for connection. The Baci Sospesi installations are an invitation to leave a word, a mark, a thought – to take or to offer. In this unforced reciprocity, the first movement of encounter is born.

Courage and emotional presence

To take a bacio sospeso, or to leave one, is a challenge to oneself. A gesture that requires openness, not defense.

It is the symbol of a possible encounter, of an affection that does not fear distance. Baci Sospesi is an invitation to lower the armor and let the thought of the other enter – without fear.

Symbols of being human

The symbolic forms of Baci Sospesi are never too symmetrical. They are not circles – always the same, perfect, rational. They are irregular, restless, and vibrant, like every human being in constant evolution. And they are always – and only – red: like blood, like everything that pulses, feels, and loves.

Why it is necessary

Today more than ever, we need to cultivate encounter. In a time that isolates, polarizes, and dehumanizes, Baci Sospesi is a revolutionary invitation to step out of the fear of the other, of what is different. It is a challenge to encounter and to listen, to build healthy, affective, evolving relationships. It is art that builds bridges, culture that moves humanity, presence and body against isolation and abstraction.