“Napoli Explosion” connects New Year’s Eve in Naples and Rio

Polo ItaliaNoRio hosts “Mario Amura: Napoli Explosion. Fireworks, Colors, Lights”, with photos and film on Naples’ New Year’s Eve, from Dec 11 to Feb 7.

New Year lights close 2025 exhibition calendar

In a New Year’s Eve atmosphere, Polo Cultural ItaliaNoRio closes its 2025 exhibition schedule with “Mario Amura: Napoli Explosion. Fireworks, Colors, Lights”. From December 11, 2025 to February 7, 2026, visitors can see 20 medium-format photographs and an 18-minute documentary film. The works portray one of the Mediterranean’s most striking collective rituals: New Year’s Eve in Naples.

On that night, Neapolitans temporarily transform their ancestral fear of Mount Vesuvius into a sea of light. Hundreds of thousands of fireworks turn the gulf into a luminous spectacle, echoing the tradition of Rio de Janeiro. The Rio exhibition celebrates this dialogue between two sister cities, united by a shared language of light and festivity.

Amura’s images do not simply document the scene. Instead, they evoke clouds, creatures and constellations emerging from the darkness. Explosions of color and form create a cosmic landscape, where fireworks become brushstrokes of pure emotion.

Copacabana and Naples in conversation

The New Year’s Eve celebration at Copacabana Beach resonates strongly with the visuals in Napoli Explosion. Like Naples, Rio embraces the symbolic power of fireworks. The sea, music, crowds and catharsis of the illuminated night help stage a moment of collective promise.

In both cities, two distant peoples move around the same ritual at the same time of year. They turn fear into beauty, expectation into hope and darkness into light. The exhibition highlights this universal dimension of New Year’s Eve as both intimate and communal.

“Neapolitans exorcise their fear of a volcanic eruption by lighting up the entire Gulf of Naples with fireworks,” says Mario Amura. “Every December 31, I climb Monte Faito with a team of friends to watch this collective ritual. From up there, the city becomes an inverted horizon, a cosmic landscape where the fireworks are brushstrokes of pure emotion.”

2,500 years of Naples, Vesuvius in a new role

In 2025, Naples celebrates its 2,500th anniversary and lights up to present itself to the world. In Amura’s photographs, the classic iconography of Vesuvius is reimagined. While painters such as Turner, Marlow, Volaire and Warhol often depicted the volcano glowing with lava, in “Napoli Explosion” it appears as a silent shadow, almost submerged beneath the fireworks of New Year’s Eve.

“‘Napoli Explosion’ is an exhibition in which photography, painting and pyrotechnic art converge in a single, extraordinary event. It is Mario Amura’s New Year’s gift to the city of Naples,” says Sylvain Bellenger, former director of the Museum and Royal Park of Capodimonte. The project underscores the artistic dimension of a popular ritual.

Art historian Salvatore Settis, president of the Louvre Scientific Committee, highlights the show’s “choral” character. “On New Year’s Eve, Naples vibrates with thousands, tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of people who ignite or watch these fireworks, without realizing they are contributing to a collective pictorial work,” he notes.

Thirteen years of light, time and emotion

In Napoli Explosion, Amura captures the time of light, which becomes the gesture of a brushstroke. The transformative effect at play shows that photography occupies its own imaginary space. Its freedom is so vast that even the photographer cannot fully control it.

The project is the result of thirteen years of work. Each photograph is a layering of time and light, a “photographic painting” that blends journalistic precision with painterly sensitivity. The series builds a visual narrative about fear, celebration and shared energy.

The Rio exhibition is sponsored by Tenaris, Ternium, Grupo Autoglass, Vale, Generali Seguros, TIM Brasil, Saipem do Brasil and Leonardo do Brasil. It forms part of the 2025 program of Polo Cultural ItaliaNoRio, supported by Brazil’s Federal Cultural Incentive Law. Production and coordination are handled by Artepadilla, in partnership with Napex s.r.l..

Who is Mario Amura?

Born in Naples in 1973, Mario Amura trained at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, studying under master cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno. From 2000 to 2012, he served as director of photography on several films screened at major festivals such as Cannes, Berlin and Venice. In 2003, he received the David di Donatello Award from the Italian Film Academy for the short film “Racconto di Guerra”, set in besieged Sarajevo in 1996.

Since 2005, Amura has worked on StopEmotion, a photographic research project focused on breaking chronological time into emotional peaks. Time, in this view, becomes a concrete object whose essence lies in the visibility of emotions. Using this technique, he has collected images in Bosnia, India, rural China, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Latin America, England and France.

His long-term photojournalism projects are marked by extended periods of immersion, allowing experience to settle into each image. Since 2007, he has also been developing Fujenti, still in progress. Napoli Explosion, started in 2010, remains an evolving body of work.

Further information on the artist’s work can be found at mario-amura.com and on Instagram at @marioamura and @napoliexplosion. The platforms share images, background stories and ongoing research related to light and time. They extend the exhibition’s universe beyond the gallery space.