The project Airport Museum Box, curated by the Nivola Foundation and promoted by the Province of Nuoro, it was born from the need to improve the visibility of the museums in the Nuoro area, in particular the MAN Museum in Nuoro, the Nivola Museum in Orani and the Mask Museum in Mamoiada.

The museums involved have different vocations, but are linked to each other by common needs and objectives, and stand out for a complex and innovative cultural proposal, which makes them central to culture and cultural tourism in the area. Due to their characteristics, their audiences and their activities, they are three museums driving the development strategy of Relaunch Plan for the Nuoro area.

Airport Museum Box brings installations by international artists to Olbia airport who represent, with their free and original work, the cultural soul common to the three museums. All of them make use of various media: photography, video, painting and sculpture. The finished works are the result of an elaboration process carried out in close contact with the museums placed online by this project.

Francesco Simeti is the artist chosen by the MAN Museum: author of a visual universe which, through a mixture of naturalistic and surreal elements, ranging from botany to medieval miniatures, conducts an analysis on the development of natural history, showing its relationship with human social history . Simeti has progressively built a vision where the logic of the Anthropocene and man’s domination over nature gives way to a disruptive return of nature, ready to regain freely evolving spaces and territories, showing its indifference to human presence.

Simeti’s speech at Olbia airport – You Belong Outside – is a reflection on the paradoxes and contrasts between the world of communication corporate for commercial purposes and the current debate on environmental sustainability and the essential need to rethink the natural environment in terms of protection and defense.

The artist’s installation is a mimetic experience that tries to contrast the commercial syntax of the images present in every part of the aviation structure to infiltrate a different perspective that nevertheless uses the same marketing language. Multiple advertising slogans, especially in the automotive sector, a privileged sector for commercial advertisements in airports, have for years built a strategy of greenwashing in defense of the environment, through grotesque and paradoxical narratives (such as SUVs that “love clean air”).

The project You Belong Outside of Simeti articulates in the airport halls a proliferation of collage of natural images artificially assembled, accompanied by slogans taken from advertising marketing to seduce the viewer to the point of deluding and confusing his perceptive capacity.

In tune with the history of landscape painting in Sardinia present in the museum collection and the current activity of the MAN, which has centered its program on a reflection dedicated to the Mediterranean world and the rethinking of man-environment relations therein, the Simeti’s project manifests itself as a direct dialogue with the territory of the island.

Francesco Simeti (1968, Palermo) lives and works in Brooklyn (New York).

He is known for his site-specific installations created through a multidisciplinary approach and using wallpaper, sculptures and three-dimensional collages. In his works the artist presents scenarios of uncontaminated nature which upon closer inspection reveal more complex contexts. Simeti appropriates images taken from newspapers and magazines, digitally modifying them and rearranging them, creating patterns that combine a strong visual appeal with a more critical aspect, raising questions about the role of media imagery in contemporary society. He has presented his works in numerous galleries, institutions and exhibition spaces in Italy and abroad.

His recent exhibitions include Homemade, Magazzino Italian Art, New York, Eruzioni: Pompeii and Santorini, Scuderie del Quirinale, Rome, Refugiuma curated by Yulia Topchiy, Assembly Room, New York, Big towersa, ICA Singapore, Swell, Open Source Gallery, Brooklyn and Armed, Barbed and Halberd-Shapeda, Milan. His works are part of the collections of The Cooper Hewitt, National Design Museum, New York, The Philadelphia Museum, Philadelphia, The Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Civiche Raccolte Musei di Milano, Milan and Palazzo Belmonte Riso, Museum of Contemporary Art , Palermo. Simeti is currently working on several public art interventions including projects for the Chicago Transit Authority in Chicago and the Multnomah County Health Department Headquarters in Portland, Oregon. He recently completed his residency at ISCP – International Studio & Curatorial Program in New York.