The 2023 programming of the MAO Museum of Oriental Art opens with a new project dedicated to Islamic art and the results it has produced over the centuries in Europe and the Mediterranean basin .

A punctual exhibition that intends to take a first look at a universe of great complexity and beauty: starting from the heritage of the collections, Luster and luxury from Islamic Spain. Liquid borders and connected worlds emphasizes the cultural syncretism between the Islamic world and Europe, which finds its ideal synthesis in the Mediterranean area, and offers the visitor an unprecedented point of view from which to observe a centuries-old history of artistic transformations and contaminations , linguistic and knowledge written in the textures of fabrics and on the shiny surface of ceramics.

Mare Nostrum, Mediterraneus, Mar Bianco, Hayam Hatikhon, Grande Verde: many names to indicate a place of meeting, confrontation, exchange, battles and dialogue between different peoples and cultures but united by a profound proximity.

The Mediterranean has always exercised a force of attraction that no people have been able to escape: for many centuries goods, traditions, inventions, discoveries were born or passed through here. Because this is not just a sea and above all it is not just Europe: it was – and in some ways still is – a possibility with a changing identity.

What is born on the shores of the Mediterranean is contaminated by proximity and takes root by necessity, grafting onto the existing and assuming new identities and forms. This happened with the Arabic language, but above all with the figurative arts, in particular with textile and ceramic production : different representations and techniques of the production of carpets, fabrics and pottery , kept as precious secrets in the territories of the Middle East and North Africa , landed in the Iberian peninsula together with the conquerors, almost a "side effect" of the centuries-old domination, giving rise to an extraordinary hybridized indigenous production .