The winners of the 12th edition of ARP come from France, Germany, Italy and Uganda. They will discuss their works in the workshop “Hic et Nunc n.4 – Repairing the Present, Imagining the Possible.” ARP will conclude with a restitution event.

ARP-Art Residency Project is a project conceived and promoted by the Centro Di Sarro, implemented with the support of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation (MAECI). Now in its 12th edition, it invites young artists to engage with the present through practices that intertwine art, care, technology, ecology, and accessibility.

In an era marked by conflict, climate crises, and radical technological transformation, art becomes a space for listening, connection, participation, repair, and resistance.

The project also reflects on the new cultural sovereignties shaped by artificial intelligence: who produces knowledge, who controls data, and who is excluded by algorithms. In response, a resilient dimension emerges—one that restores value to materiality, manual gestures, and imperfection, understood as forms of resistance against digital dominance.

Furthermore, ARP embraces a geopolitics of inclusion, fostering decentralized narratives and “minor” perspectives that challenge dominant canons. This involves not only dismantling architectural barriers but also removing the cultural, economic, and linguistic obstacles that increasingly render the art world elitist and inaccessible.

The Centro Di Sarro establishes the Museum Luigi Di Sarro and opens it on the occasion of the 21st Contemporary Art Day, organized by Amaci. The collection is on permanent display, but also includes spaces for project spaces, interactive exhibitions, and special events.

For the 21st Gdc, on October 4, 2025, the Luigi Di Sarro Museum will have special opening hours: morning hours from 10 am to 12:30 pm and afternoon hours from 4 pm to 7:30 pm.

The Luigi Di Sarro Center for Documentation of Contemporary Artistic Research, founded in Rome in 1981 following the artist’s sudden passing, has been a point of reference for emerging and experimental art for over 40 years. Today, to enhance its role as a place of contemporary art, it is being expanded as a private museum and permanent collection space. Its rotating displays will be open to dialogue, allowing the public to experience the work of Di Sarro, who worked in the 1960s and 1970s, embodying with full conviction the spirit of informed, forward-thinking, interdisciplinary and multimedia research.

The Center’s four exhibition spaces—which to date have hosted over 400 solo and group exhibitions by emerging artists—display a first selection of works that showcase Di Sarro’s research and method.

A method continually torn between scientific practice and pure imagination, the need for reality and the desire for fantasy, that guided all of Di Sarro’s speculative research and artistic practice, consigning to the duty of memory a weighty mass of works that continue to demand a voice. “My works of art will be like swords that will conquer. The new forms for the world of tomorrow,” the artist wrote in January 1971, and later also “If art accompanies my life. If my life serves art. I… can even die” (February 1978). He died a year later, in February 1979, at just 37 years old. In his studio remain sheets, notes, images, and texts already drafted from what was to become his “Manual of Artistic Anatomy,” his Discourse on Method. This museum aims to perpetuate his epistemological, artistic, and aesthetic legacy.

TGR LAZIO – 4 ottobre 2015 h.14,00 – servizio di Antonella Pallante

POZI: places and landscapes of tomorrow. Curated by Giggs Kgole, with a text by Buhle Mathole. From 2 to 6 July 2024.

The ephemeral memory of the man-nature relationship in the works of Anna Maria D’Addario and the Citti/Tamburrini duo. A project in collaboration with Grenze-Arsenali Fotografici and Officine Fotografiche. Vernissage 4 Maggio h.18,30

Anna Maria Antoinette D’Addario is an Italian-Australian photographic artist, writer and book maker. Her work revolves around the investigation and resurrection of memory and our emotional connection to place. She has published two artist books, Farewell Angelina (2018) and Deep in Their Roots, All Flowers Keep the Light (ceiba Editions 2019). Anna holds a MFA in Fine Art, Sydney College of the Arts, and is a current PhD candidate at Monash University in Fine Art.

This work began as a response to the sudden and violent death of my sister in 2015 and gradually became a path to live and make sense of life again. It was an act of resistance, an attempt to speak in the face of silence. With her murder, time stopped, all became fractured and fragmented. I, together with my mother and all who loved her, were drawn into an obscure world without her, a world broken and changed.

As children my sister and I spent hours in the bush, and by the ocean. After her loss I sought to regain the connection to the landscape that existed in my memory and reflected our origins, a desire to be clear again in my understanding of it. Landscape endures. It takes and hold its form. Landscape speaks in my work, in part, in its resilience, of survival in the present and for survival of the past; it holds memories; it speaks of connections, but it also speaks of violence and irretrievable loss. It represents then, continuity and also absence, it stands for what can never be lost and for all that has been lost; it embodies trauma and it embodies endu- rance, the persistence of which no violence can erase.

My sister was thirty-five when her life was taken. Her future has been lost and the past and our childhood has been altered and affected. The knowledge and weight of our history has only one side now, one gaze, and one recollection. Here I accompany my sister in story, photos of myself as a child mirror and connect with those of Daniela. We break silence together, identities entwined.

This project was conceived through the creation of an artist’s book, Farewell Angelina, and a successive photo book, Deep in Their Roots, All Flower Keep the Light. (Anna Maria Antoinette D’Addario)

What is then left of the landscape when the people who loved it, lived in it, are no longer there? Powerlessness and absence do not turn a place into a view, a space into a landscape.
Representation, which attempts to repair the trauma of loss, cannot be a layer of memory above others.

“My spaces are fragile: time will consume them, destroy them: nothing will no longer resemble what it was,” wrote Georges Perec. If memory can erase, trauma can instead hold the glimpse of what was. Memories reinvent, narrate, betray, trauma instead fixes. The fracture pierces the veil of the landscape, not repairs it. The violent tear of loss cannot but lacerate representation – even of the usual landscape – and open the Montale’s wonder. (Simone Azzoni)

Giordana Citti was born in Rome in 1993. In 2012, she began attending evening courses in photography and darkroom printing at Officine Fotografiche, training with te- acher Samantha Marenzi. After graduating in “History and conservation of the artistic and archaeological heritage”, he decided to devote himself full-time to photography by enrolling in the Biennial School of Photography at Officine Fotografiche Roma. He first became a darkroom assistant and later refined his professional training by starting an internship at Davide di Gianni’s Digid’a Art Prints workshop in Rome. He currently teaches darkroom courses at Officine Fotografiche, attends the Faculty of “Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Heritage”, concerning the restoration of book and photographic material, at the University of Rome Tor Vergata and works in the photographic archives of the National Film Library of the Experimental Centre of Cinematography in Rome.In 2021 he was among the ten artists selected to take part in the photography masterclass Contatto of the Istituto Luce Cinecittà and TWM Factory. He has taken part in many exhibitions in recent years: Of Analogica on the occasion of Fotoleggendo (2016), Female in March, a group exhibition of female photographers at Lanificio (2018), Temporary Wall, an open air exhibition at Fotoleggendo (2018), The Family of no Man for Arles cosmos (2018), In Praise of Imperfection at Fondamenta gallery (2019), GeneraHumana on the occasion of the Genera Festival (2019) in Cister- nino, Walk With Women on the occasion of the MedFilmFestival in Rome (2019), Hier, mais aussi aujourd’hui, solo exhibition at the Fusion Art Gallery in Turin (2020), The Darkroom Projet Otto, group exhibition curated by Luciano Corvaglia, at the Palazzo Doria Pamphilj in San Martino al Cimino (2020), Contatto, at WeGil (2021), MarteLive, national finalist Biennale MarteLive at Planet Roma (2021), Premio Daniela Semprebene, exhibition of the winners of the visual arts sections MarteLive Lazio 2021, at the ART G. A.P. Gallery, Rome (2022), Tevere Art Gallery/Arles 2022, collective photographic exhibition curated by Luciano Corvaglia on the occasion of Les Rencontres d’Arles, in “Arles Exposition-Off”(2022), MarteLive: Lo spettacolo totale, national finalist Biennale MarteLive, at Qube, Rome (2022), Venere Vs Medusa on the occasion of Paratissima, at Cavallerizza Torino (2023).

Annalaura Tamburrini was born in Fasano in 1994. She trained as a photographer at the “Officine Fotografiche” school in Rome where, during the period from 2015 to 2019, she deepened her knowledge of darkroom practices, black and white printing and ancient printing techniques under the guidance of teacher Samantha Marenzi. During this path, she has the opportunity to exhibit and curate various photographic projects within the local independent scene. In June 2017, during the international photo- graphy festival ‘FotoLeggendo’, she participates in the group exhibition ‘Analogica 2017’. In February 2018, she presents the project “Sono una strega” at the Cinema Palazzo Occupato in Rome as part of the group exhibition “Tecne”. In May 2018, she co-curates the exhibition cycle “Analogies”, presented at the Officine Fotografiche school in Rome. In the same month, she exhibited the project ‘Sono una strega’ within the same cycle. Also in May 2018, she co-curates the exhibition ‘Nel corpo dell’immagine’, part of the international photography festival ‘FotoLeggendo’ in Rome. In February 2019, he took part in the group exhibition ‘In Praise of Imperfection’ with the project ‘Moral to Censorship’ at the Inside Art Gallery in Rome. In August 2019, she curates the international group exhibition ‘GeneraHumana’ at the Torre Civica in Cisternino. From 2020, after moving to Turin, she collaborates with the cultural association Mostro Collettivo. From 2023 she is represented by the Raw Messina gallery in Rome and collaborates actively with Gabriele Stabile. In January 2024 she exhibits in Bologna, in the context of the Arte Fiera fuoriisalone, during the Booming Art Show in an exhibition curated by Raw Messina, entitled ‘La vita sognata dagli angeli’.

The Anima Naturae project aims to portray the contrast between the fleeting es- sence of humanity and the timeless spirit of nature.
Each diptych pairs a weathered stone portrait, bearing the marks of time, mold, and the relentless forces of weathering, with an untouched photograph capturing the pristine landscape. The stone portrait serves as a tangible testament to the vulnerability of the human soul over time, narrating a story of transience conti- nually shaped by transformative elements in its natural habitat. On the flip side, earth unfolds as the epicenter of an eternal animation of nature, presenting an ideal and idyllic realm that underscores primordial soul and spirituality, untouched by human manipulation.

Through this visual reflection, viewers are invited to contemplate the duality of fragility and strength, transience and persistence, fostering a profound aware- ness of the intricate connections between humanity and the broader living world. Anima Naturae emerges as a conceptual bridge, blurring the boundaries betwe- en human finiteness and the boundless vitality of nature, illustrating how, despite human endeavors, we inevitably yield to the unstoppable power of the natural world, prompting reflection on the sustainability of our interactions with the planet. All photographs are made with black and white analog film [portraits with 135mm, landscapes with 120mm]. (Giordana Citti and Annalaura Tamburrini)

VAA 3rd Edition. The 10 finalists screened at the UJ Arts Centre. Journey to discover the Johannesburg art scene for the Italian winner Giulia Savorani who presented her work together with Liza Grobler who won the selection for South Africa.

The second event to promote the works selected for the third edition of the VIDEO ART AWARDS took place on 9 December 2022. Second opportunity for the two winners Liza Grobler and Giulia Savorani to meet and promote the other 8 finalists of the award dedicated to video art created by the Di Sarro Center with the support of the Italian Cultural Institute of Pretoria and the Consulate General of Italy in Johannesburg, South Africa and the Grenze Festival in Verona, Italy.

For Giulia Savorani it was an opportunity to discover Johannesburg’s lively art scene, for a week after the screening event she was in fact, thanks to the award, able to visit museums, research centres, artists’ studios and galleries as well as historical and traditions of the country of Nelson Mandela thus discovering its history and current events.

SEGNI. Photographs, drawings and sculptures by Luigi Di Sarro, curated by Carlotta Sylos Calò. 11 October- 14 November 2018 MLAC – Museo Laboratorio di Arte Contemporanea, Rome

In the fortieth anniversary of the death of Luigi Di Sarro, the exhibition organized by the MLAC with Centro Di Sarro offers a glimpse of the production of Luigi Di Sarro between the 1960s and the 1970s, highlighting the transversal nature of his approach to techniques and materials and his characteristic conception of the “sign” as a generative element of shapes and spaces, without a real caesura between abstraction and figuration, evident both in graphic and pictorial work, and in photography and sculpture.

Di Sarro, avid experimenter in his artistic activity, has practiced drawing, painting, engraving, sculpture, photography and performance, focusing in particular on themes related to the body, movement, light and abstraction capacity of the sign and the geometric figures. Di Sarro died only thirty-seven years old, killed for a fatal misunderstanding in the tense climate of the years of lead in Rome, on February 24, 1979; he left a vast artistic production (paintings, drawings, photographs, sculptures, graphics, projects, notes, aphorisms). Works by Luigi Di Sarro are in several Italian and foreign public collections (including GNAM, MACRO, Palazzo Braschi and the National Institute for Graphic Design in Rome, Pompidou Center in Paris).</p>

Active since 1987, the Museo Laboratorio di Arte Contemporanea-MLAC, directed by Prof. Claudio Zambianchi, has been proposed since the beginning as a meeting place between the university and the contemporary cultural world, distinguishing itself for its vocation to research and training. Among the initiatives that have animated the program for thirty years, there are exhibitions, conferences, round tables, book presentations, festivals, video reviews and musical proposals, which aim at first hand to put in contact the most lively artistic and cultural realities of the moment with the students and scholars of the University, often coming to involve them actively. In the same way, the will to open up to the city is strong, involving all citizens through the proposal of a very varied program.
Exhibitions and events promoted and organized by the MLAC take place in the spaces set aside in 1985 by the La Sapienza University of Rome, at the Rettorato Building, in the heart of the University City.

www.museolaboratorioartecontemporanea.it

On the occasion of organizing and carrying out the exhibition the MLAC offers a possibility of internship to students who have an interest in deepening in the field the craft of the historian and art critic in all facets. The internship foresees, in fact, an active commitment both during the preparation stage, with the possibility of working in close contact with the curators, and during the opening period of the exhibition, managing the guided tours, the reception of visitors and, last but not least , all the work related to the promotion of the exhibition, learning to manage the various online communication channels, from the blog to the main social networks.

 

LUIGI DI SARRO WORLD DISCLOSURE curated by Paola Ballesi EDOARDO VILLA MUSEUM UNIVERSITY OF PRETORIA SOUTH AFRICA

March 2 – May 18, 2018

Inaugurated in Pretoria, South Africa, the exhibition with which the international celebrations for 40 years after the death of Luigi Di Sarro starts. The event is promoted by the Istituto Italiano di Cultura in Pretoria with the collaboration of the UP ARTS Department of the University of Pretoria. The images of the opening and the academic lecture.