RADIS 2025

Radis, is an art project in the public space developed and promoted by the Fondazione per l’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea CRT, the art-oriented body of the Fondazione CRT. It is now in its second edition following the extremely successful experience of the first edition with Giulia Cenci’s work le masche in the town of Rittana. This second edition is a new curated by Marta Papini once more in collaboration with the Fondazione CRC, with the Kosovar visual artist Petrit Halilaj who will create a site-specific work in Borgata Valdibà, in the district of Dogliani (Cuneo).

The curator Marta Papini invited artist Petrit Halilaj (1986, Kostërrc, Kosovo) to work in the Borgata Valdibà. The area lies in a belvedere at the heart of the Langhe along a road connecting Dogliani to Monforte d’Alba, that walkers, ramblers, hikers and cyclists can enjoy from Spring through Autumn. Here, alongside the Church of San Bartolomeo (Saint Bartholemew) and its rectory, lies a compact two storey building that was the school of the hamlet until the 1960s, a point of reference for all the boys and girls of the surroundings. The school is no longer usable but where artist Petrit Halilaj will create a work as part of the Abetare (Primer Book) series, created from doodles scribbled on school desks.

The Abetare series started in 2015, using the archive of the doodles and drawings on the desks in the school in Runik (Kosovo), the village where Halilaj grew up in. Over the past ten years the artist has created a doodle and drawing archive that inspire him: the results are monumental steel and bronze sculptures, drawing from the childhood imaginaries in different times and space overlapping into a single language. The Abetare series has been exhibited in several major institutions, including the roof top of the New York Metropolitan Museum in 2024, as part of the Roof Garden Commission.

For Radis Halilaj will work starting with the doodles and drawings found on the Dogliani school desks combined with those from his archive.  The work will occupy the space once filled by the former school, as if a stylized house with no walls, inhabited by imaginary creatures from the school desks of the Langhe and the Balkans: their meeting will shape a monument to the universal language of imagination and fantasy. The work will be inaugurated in October.

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For details please visit the website: www.radis-crt.it