RADIS PRESENTS ABETARE (A DAY AT THE SCHOOL)

The second edition of Radis, the art for public spaces project conceived and supported by the Fondazione Arte CRT, the ‘art oriented’ arm of the Fondazione CRT, is concluding with the inauguration of the site-specific work Abetare (a day at the school), 2025. Doodles and Drawings from Schools in Dogliani and the Balkans by Kosovan artist Petrit Halilaj.

The public opening will be on Sunday, 5 October at 11:30 am. The artist Petrit Halilaj and the curator Marta Papini will be present along with representatives from the institutions and local authorities. The project will be introduced by Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo (president of the Fondazione Arte CRT), Mauro Gola (president of the Fondazione CRC) and Claudio Raviola (mayor of Dogliani). After a welcome coffee at the adjacent farm of Marco Zabaldano, the day will continue with the opening of the exhibition All that you touch, You Change. All that you Change, Changes you in the former chapel of the Ritiro della Sacra Famiglia, Belvedere di Dogliani. Refreshments will be provided in the Sala Polifunzionale of Dogliani.

 ‘Through Radis, we are bringing art outside museum walls and into people’s lives, in dialogue with the local area and community. We believe that when culture is accessible and shared, it is a root that can generate social cohesion, beauty and future development’ explains Anna Maria Poggi, president of the Fondazione CRT. ‘And this is the deeper meaning of the project, which not only enriches the artistic heritage of Piedmont, it also strengthens ties between people and places.’

Entrusted, like the first edition of Radis, to curator Marta Papini and in collaboration with the Fondazione CRC, the work for this second edition of Radis , under the patronage of the Region of Piedmont, was created in Borgata Valdibà, in a panoramic spot in the heart of the Langhe, on a road that leads from Dogliani to Monforte d’Alba and where there was once a village school in a two-floor building in disuse since the 1970s. The artist’s work occupies the space of the old school and at the same time reveals the surrounding landscape, which was previously hidden by the building.

The installation, which will remain the property of the Fondazione Arte CRT and be given on loan to the Municipality of Dogliani.

‘We are delighted to inaugurate the work for the second edition of Radis, a project to which Fondazione Arte CRT devotes particular attention, and which aims to leave a significant, enduring mark on Dogliani and our region’, states Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, president of Fondazione Arte CRT, ‘Petrit Halilaj’s work interprets this commitment, connecting seemingly distant places and communities – the Langhe and the Balkans – and bringing them close through the shared language of the imagination and children’s fantasy. The artist has translated drawings made by boys and girls on school desks into a permanent sculpture that enriches the landscape and enters into dialogue with the history of the place. I am convinced that this installation will unite memory and perspective, offering the community a new space of reflection and exchange.’

Abetare (a day at the school), 2025. Doodles and Drawings from Schools in Dogliani and the Balkans is the first permanent work of the project Abetare, from which it draws its title, a series of works that Halilaj has been developing since 2015. Abetare (a day at the school), 2025 gives three-dimensional shape to a stylised house that was carved on a desk by a child in a school in Dogliani. The artist assembled steel tubes that had been bent and twisted to faithfully represent the drawing, turning a fleeting doodle into a permanent sculpture. As indicated by the title, Halilaj breathed life into a new imaginary school filled with creatures, messages and symbols from school desks in the Langhe and the Balkans. The work is a crossroads of symbols and figures from different geographic areas, joyfully celebrating the imagination, freedom and children’s play in every place and time.

Begun in 2015, Abetare started with the archiving of drawings found on desks in the former school in Runik (Kosovo), the village where Halilaj grew up. The artist built an archive of drawings that he draws from to create monumental sculptures in steel or bronze, inspired by the image worlds of children from different times and places, which overlap in the works in a unified language. The series Abetare has been on view at several important institutions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York in 2024, as that year’s Roof Garden Commission.

‘Children’s drawings are a door to freedom’, states artist Petrit Halilaj, ‘When I first began expressing my thoughts and wishes, I always felt more comfortable drawing than talking. Drawing was like breathing, or even flying. The process of collecting material for the works in the Abetare series involves looking at a vast quantity of drawings, specifically ones made by children on school desks in Kosovo, the Balkans more generally and now also Dogliani. They contain truths that adults are often unable to express. They are raw, tender and courageous – sparks of inventiveness and freedom. They remind me that art can be a form of survival, but also of play.’

Children from every part of the world doodle on school desks. From the moment they can hold a pencil, the world is their drawing paper: doors, tables, floors, drawers. Everyone can remember, thinking back, drawing on their school desk: a stylised house, their own initials, a smiling sun or a simple HELLO. Not as an act of vandalism or transgression, but out of the need to appropriate an object that is central to everyday life and yet anonymous, leaving a sign that we were there and transforming the school desk into an attestation of our presence in the school.

‘Petrit Halilaj’s Abetare (a day at the school) is the second work of the public art programme Radis’, explains the curator, Marta Papini, ‘The first – Giulia Cenci’s le masche – paid homage to the stratified history in the Chiot Rosa clearing: stories of resistance, fear, joy, stories of love and hate, stories of plants and animals. Petrit Halilaj’s work reveals another world of stories, that of childhood. Abetare (a day at the school) is a hymn to freedom and the imagination, in the form of a house filled with creatures that were drawn on school desks in the Langhe and the Balkans. It is a meeting of cultures that becomes a joyful celebration of children’s imagination and play, from every place and time.’

Also on Sunday, 5 October, along with the work by Petrit Halilaj, the exhibition All that you touch, You Change. All that you Change, Changes you will open at the Chiesetta del Ritiro della Sacra Famiglia, Dogliani. Curated by Marta Papini, the exhibition will feature works from the collections of the Fondazione Arte CRT and the Fondazione CRC that would otherwise be unavailable to the public, so that they can be enjoyed by a broader audience. The reference to the dystopian novel by Octavia E. Butler The Parable of the Sower, the opening poem of which gave the exhibition its title, was inspired by Nolan Oswald Dennis’s Notes for recovery (hold), one of the works on view. The exhibition reflects on art as a tool for hope and openness to the future through a selection of works by Marina Abramović, Sol Calero, Chiara Camoni, Bracha L. Ettinger, Dorothy Iannone and Nolan Oswald Dennis that touch on these themes, expressing them from different perspectives.

‘For the second consecutive year, thanks to our renewed partnership with Fondazione Arte CRT, the project Radis is bringing the province of Cuneo an important new work of public art by an internationally recognised artist that actively involves local communities’ states Mauro Gola, president of Fondazione CRC, ‘Confirming the strategic role that beauty can play today, as a generative force that can support the development and growth of our communities.’

Radis, from the Piedmontese term for ‘root’, was created to bring contemporary art to a broad public and engage with unconventional contexts. Radis is divided into four parts: the commission of permanent public artworks, an education programme for schools, curated by Feliz in collaboration with the association La Scatola Gialla, which will continue after the work is installed, the exhibition and a public programme aimed to engage the public in the lead up to the opening of Petrit Halilaj’s installation and promote public art in the province of Cuneo, with a special focus on the Fondazione CRC project A Cielo Aperto. Conceived by Barbara De Micheli, a project manager and producer with extensive experience managing artistic and cultural projects, these itineraries for discovering the artworks scattered across the Cuneo area offer the public an opportunity to explore artistic heritage that merges with the landscape and local communities. The initiative will conclude on Saturday 11 and Sunday 12 October: in Dogliani, the focus will be the installation by Petrit Halilaj, with cultural mediation activities, workshops and snack for children in English and Italian; in Alba, discovery of the works Alba by Valerio Berruti and Porta di Luce by Samuel Di Blasi; in Guarene, a walk and discussion of the work I Dormienti by Hilario Isola, for the anniversary of the 23 days of the city of Alba; finally, in Castagnito, discovery of the work Paesaggio in 565 giorni e 33 scalini by Victoria Stoian.

‘It is with immense pride that the city of Dogliani is hosting the second edition of Radis, a project that joins together and creates dialogue between the energy of contemporary art and the identity of the region and the local community’ states Claudio Raviola, mayor of Dogliani, ‘Petrit Halilaj’s installation brings new visibility and tourist appeal to Borgata Valdibà, a meaningful place in our local area, on the road between Dogliani and Monforte. The installation offers yet another reason to travel this route, adding it to the already numerous options for sustainable tourism, which favours the slow pace of walking and cycling. A pace that allows us to properly observe and experience the landscape, in total contact with nature.’

Across the four-year period 2024–2027, Radis will produce works of art in public spaces in active collaboration with local residents, organisations and associations. The new works, in conversation with local histories and the landscape, will help create a new shared imaginary and stimulate tourism that is attentive to the environment and sustainability.

Link – Press kit