he project that the Kosovar artist has been working on for almost fifteen years has arrived in the Langhe. For the second edition of Radis, a permanent sculpture by Halilaj has been installed in place of a small village school that has been disused since the 1970s, blending into the landscape that embraces the Alps and the hills.

The sixth episode of the diary, entitled Il racconto di Petrit Halilaj (The Storytelling by Petrit Halilaj), brings the second edition to a close. Curator Marta Papini collects the testimony of the Kosovar artist, who on 5 October inaugurated Abetare (A Day at the School), his first permanent artwork in Italy, in the Langhe region. The engravings on the desks of the old Borgata Valdibà school become a public sculpture, where personal and collective memories converge, from Halilaj’s childhood in Runik to the experiences of the children of the Langhe, creating a shared narrative of imagination and the future.

Enjoy the read!

Following the success of last year’s programme, which involved more than 400 teachers of all levels, the second edition of the aulArte teacher training programme was launched yesterday at the GAM (Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea) in Turin. The programme was conceived and promoted by the Fondazione Arte CRT in collaboration with the Piedmont Regional School Board.

Representatives from the Education Departments of the participating institutions — the Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art, Cittadellarte – Fondazione Pistoletto, the GAM Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, the Fondazione Merz, the PAV Parco Arte Vivente and the Pinacoteca Agnelli — presented the proposals and procedures for participating in the training days, which will take place between October 2025 and March 2026.

As well as promoting access to cultural sites for students from the 30 Piedmontese schools selected in June, aulArte is supporting a teacher training programme organised by the Education Departments of contemporary art institutions for the second consecutive year, with the aim of equipping teachers with the skills to develop their own teaching methods using contemporary art in school curricula. Teachers will be able to access one or more of the proposed activities free of charge upon reservation. A certificate of participation will be issued at the end of each activity.

The first event, L’arte come scintilla per nuove prospettive: il potere trasformativo della domanda (Art as a Spark for New Perspectives: The Transformative Power of Questioning), organised by the Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art and curated by Paola Zanini, Head of the Education Department at the Castello di Rivoli, will be held on Saturday 18 October. This training day, which is both theoretical and practical, will explore the intrinsic power of art to generate questions, stimulating curiosity and critical thinking. This event is part of the Castello di Rivoli’s Accademia della Curiosità (Academy of Curiosity), which aims to cultivate questioning abilities and responsible action through art. A second meeting with a similar format will be held on Saturday 7 February 2026, focusing specifically on new works in the museum’s collection and upcoming exhibitions.

On Saturday 8 November, the event Equilibrio dove sei? Un percorso di conoscenza dell’equilibrio corporeo a partire dall’idea di Open School del Terzo Paradiso (Equilibrium, where are you? A journey of discovery into bodily equilibrium starting from the concept of the Open School of the Third Paradise) is organised by Cittadellarte-Fondazione Pistoletto and curated by the Ufficio Ambienti d’Apprendimento e Formazione (Office for Learning and Training Environments), in collaboration with the Circobiloba Sports Association and the Open School of the Third Paradise. This experiential activity focuses on physical and emotional balance and is linked to the themes of educational innovation, inclusion, and well-being at school. It combines educational theories and physical practices. On Saturday 17 January 2026, the event Nasce prima il libro o la gallina? Un esercizio di scrittura creativa e collettiva sui passi di Zoe Salvamondo e del Terzo Paradiso (‘Which came first, the book or the chicken?’ A creative and collective writing exercise in the footsteps of Zoe Salvamondo and the Third Paradise) will provide teachers with theoretical and practical training, guiding them on a journey of collective creation inspired by the character of Zoe Salvamondo and the concept of the Third Paradise.

M²/M² [Mario Merz] is organised by the Fondazione Merz and will take place on Tuesday, 11 November. To celebrate the Foundation’s 20th anniversary, the training for teachers will explore the connections between the works of Mario and Marisa Merz. There will be a theoretical session on Mario Merz’s work and a practical session on wicker weaving as a preparatory technique for sculptural creation, to stimulate critical awareness in artistic appreciation and production. On Tuesday, 10 March 2026, M²/M² [Marisa Merz] will analyse Marisa Merz’s drawings and weavings as an expression of cyclical gestures in dialogue with time. The workshop session will focus on the fundamentals of crochet.

GAM – Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Torino is organising three events. The first is a workshop with Alessandra Racca entitled Dialoghi immersivi – Parole di Notte  (Immersive Dialogues – Words of the Night), which will take place on Monday 17 November. The exhibition Nights. The representation of the nocturne from the 18^(th) century to the present day will provide the basis for a poetic-narrative writing workshop for secondary school teachers, which includes a visit to the exhibition. A second event with the same format will be dedicated to secondary school teachers on Monday 24 November. Finally, on Monday 1 December, Dialoghi Immersivi – Come per incanto (Immersive Dialogues – As if by magic) will offer a meeting with Elisabetta di Maggio and a workshop for primary school teachers, focusing on the artist’s ‘Frangibile’ (Fragile) exhibition, which explores the material aspects and manual skills of art.

On Wednesday, 10 December, PAV Parco Arte Vivente will be organising Wunderkammer d’Altrove, which is curated by Orietta Brombin and museum educator Elisabetta Reali. This event invites visitors to embark on a journey through art, identity and nature, drawing inspiration from the work of the Italian-Senegalese artist Binta Diaw. It explores themes such as migration, belonging, the body, territory, diaspora, gender, memory, decolonisation and multiculturalism. Then, on Wednesday 18 March 2026, the Bioma Preview event will offer visitors the chance to explore the outdoor spaces of the PAV in springtime and learn about the new interactive exhibition, Bioma, by Piero Gilardi, as well as the PAV_Herbarium, a collection of botanical species.

On Saturday, 31 January 2026, the event L’educazione informale in Pinacoteca Agnelli. Identità della nostra epoca (Informal Education at the Pinacoteca Agnelli. Identity of our era), organised by the Pinacoteca Agnelli, will stimulate reflection on identity through art. There will be a visit to the Alice Neel exhibition. ‘I am the Century’ is an opportunity to explore the theme of portraiture and the social, political and human issues raised by the artist. There will also be a practical workshop exploring the theme in a contemporary context. The second event, L’educazione informale in Pinacoteca Agnelli. Dal museo al territorio e ritorno (‘Informal Education at the Pinacoteca Agnelli. From the museum to the territory and back”), will explore the theme of identity through art. The event will take place on Saturday, 14 March. It will include a guided tour of Pista 500, the historic FIAT car testing circuit which is now an open-air exhibition space. This space hosts a project of artistic installations which will be the subject of reflection in the workshop. Participants will also have the opportunity to explore the impact that contemporary museums can have on their host territories.

Dowload the full program

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

The project that the Kosovar artist has been working on for almost fifteen years is coming to the Langhe region. For the second edition of Radis, a permanent sculpture by Halilaj will blend into the landscape embracing the Alps and the hills, instead of a small village school which has been disused since the 1970s.

In the third episode of the diary, entitled ‘Con supercondominio7 l’arte indipendente si fa casa comune’ (With supercondominio7, independent art becomes a shared home), the curatorial duo Treti Galaxie recounts the seventh edition of the event that brought independent art projects from all over Italy and Europe to Dogliani. The event aimed to encourage reflection on public art and education through presentations, performances and meetings, which transformed the town into a collective laboratory of shared memories, practices and dreams.

Enjoy the read!

In the photo: The Clock Tower and the Chapel of ‘Ritiro della Sacra famiglia’ (the Retreat of the Holy Family).

The project that the Kosovar artist has been working on for almost fifteen years is coming to the Langhe region. For the second edition of Radis, a permanent sculpture by Halilaj will blend into the landscape embracing the Alps and the hills, instead of a small village school which has been disused since the 1970s.

In the third episode of the diary, entitled ‘La nuova tappa del progetto radis (The new stage of the Radis project)‘, Elena Valsania and Christian Grappiolo, coordinators of Studio Feliz, provide a detailed description of the educational programme involving new schools, teachers and pupils.

Enjoy the read!

In the photo: (Detail) Interior of the Borgata Valdibà school in Dogliani © Andrea Guermani