The 2020 was the year of caos, fear and disappointment. People had to face a proper war, the one against Covid-19, that no one could have ever imagined would be happening.

The art world and its related activities, since the spread of the pandemic, have been struggling to stay alive trying their best to make it through.

It is known that art is a social phenomenon and it is exactly its main strength. Artists, more than anyone else, need to explore and go deeper in the roots of the communities where they work. Artists’ Residence was born from this need. It is easy to understand what they do: artists are asked to stay for a given period of time in places where they can freely develop thier art, sometimes also being inspired by the stories and lives of the residents.

This is what happened in Via della Fucina 16 (Turin) with the Residence Programme 2020.
It fits perfectly in this willingness of regeneration and rebirth that places art at its core and enhances its intrinsic social value.

This programme was born in Turin back in January 2016, to be more precise in the Porta Palazzo neighborhood’s, from an idea of artist-run-organization Kaninchenhaus and Coniglioviola duo.

Courtesy of Viadellafucina16 foto gallery

An apartment building with more than two hundred residents belonging to different nationalities, has been chosen as home for artists’ artworks, both the less known ones and the most famous ones (for instance, Michelangelo Pistoletto and Giorgio Griffa). Thanks to their masterpieces, it was given a new life to the building’s common spaces.
Art became the residents’ new neighbor and, at the same time, also of the community.

What was the main goal? Turn the building into a museum which the main values would have been innovation, social integration and redevelopment of the building itself. Well, mission accomplished.
The success of such initiative has been astonishing, SIAE and MiBact have decided to support it and, when in 2020 the fourth edition has started, it confirmed the good trend of the previous years, even with the Covid-19 restrictions and all the red-zone related rules.

The artists who joined the exposition – Raffaele Cirianni, Daniele Costa, Genuardi Ruta, Simona Anna Gentile, Diego Miguel Mirabella, Matteo Vettorello, Francesca Arri, collettivo SezioneAurora – have been more creative than ever, for istance they realized artworks with material obtained by a barter programme (apples were exchanged with textiles).

In this way, within four years, this format has reached a great visibility mainly thanks to its bond with the community.

Courtesy of Viadellafucina16 foto gallery

The residence programme 2020 – a building as a museum it’s the proof that art can work as a bonding tool and can address the society towards a better change.
Dostoevskij said that the beauty (and therefore art) would have saved the world. How dare we deny it.