3 March – 25 June 2023

ODESSA STEPS. The Potemkin Stairs between cinema and architecture

edited by Giovanni Francesco Tuzzolino and Federico Crimi

in collaboration with

Territorial University Center of Agrigento_University of Palermo, National University Lviv Polytechnic

State Archive of the Odessa Region

An unprecedented and important exhibition dedicated to the history and myth of the Odessa staircase, renamed by popular culture the “Potemkin Staircase” following the success of the famous film by Sergej Mikhailovich Ejzenštejn, The battleship Potemkin of 1925.

The original project of the staircase, a monumental hinge between the sea and the city, was signed in the 1830s by the architect Francesco Carlo Boffo (1796-1867) whose biography remained shrouded in mystery for decades, in balanced between an oral tradition that linked him to Sardinia and new documentary pieces that the exhibition reveals along the way, thanks to recent archive discoveries.

3 March – 25 June 2023

OLIVE BARBIERI_ Twelve ee hs nine . DOLMEN AND MENHIR IN SARDINIA

edited by Marco Delogu and Chiara Gatti

A project of the Sardinia Foundation | as part of AR/S – Shared Art in Sardinia

Olivo Barbieri, one of the major contemporary Italian artists and photographers, was invited by the Sardinia Foundation to turn his gaze to the island, to undertake three journeys over two years, deciphering a space-time bubble between archeology and contemporary imagination . The object of the research is the heritage composed of numerous megaliths, dolmens and menhirs scattered across the island, according to logics still unclear to scholars, observed in their ability to modify the space that surrounds them. Barbieri, who had already traveled to Brittany and Carnac in the 1980s, attracted by these megalithic monuments, by the mystery of their genesis and their function, even if with years of delay and with a certain sense of guilt for having waited so long, arrives in Sardinia to approach an equally unique heritage, little known, even for many almost unknown.

3 March – 15 April 2023

Massimo Grimaldi_ Fading In

with a text by Luca Cerizza, coordinated by Elisabetta Masala

The first appointment in the Project Room offers a selection of photographic reports created between 2010 and 2021. Grimaldi’s poetics develops in constant tension between ethics and aesthetics. The artist has developed a working method that involves systematic collaboration with EMERGENCY, a humanitarian association created with the aim of offering free medical support to civilian victims of war and poverty. Since 2007 the artist has participated in competitions with projects which envisaged, in case of winning, the donation of the sum to EMERGENCY and the creation of reportages in places where the NGO is active. The most striking case dates back to 2009, when Grimaldi won the MAXXI 2per100 competition with a project which established to donate 92% of the prize of 700,000 euros to EMERGENCY for the construction of the Pediatric Center of Port Sudan and to document the activity of the hospital , from its construction to full operation. An approach that demonstrates how Grimaldi reflects on society and intervenes on it, re-discussing the role of the artist.

3 March – 25 June 2023

PRATHA STUDIO

Textures and geometries

coordination by Rita Moro

Studio Pratha is an experimental creative hotbed born in 2017 from an intuition of Graziella Carta, founder and creative director of the group. Welcoming inspirations from visionary designers and eclectic artists, Pratha reinterprets in a contemporary key a weaving technique with a thousand-year history, now practiced only in the village of Sarule. The execution phase of the tapestries remains anchored to the heart of Barbagia, where the master weavers create the Pratha works using Sardinian sheep’s wool and working on the traditional vertical loom, totally manual. The creative phase instead crosses the island and national borders, opening up to collaborations that bring the Pratha tapestries into international museums and galleries. While ranging between various styles and inspirations, the works move in the dimension of abstractionism, but there is no shortage of experimentation in the figurative field, including the recent tribute to Guernica, Weaving Peace , born from the collaboration with the MAN Museum. Today, design and high craftsmanship intertwine on Studio Pratha frames, in a continuous experimentation that fully fits into the contemporary artistic panorama.