Nivola at the Sardinian Regional Council Building 1985/2015
The exhibition retraces the evolution of Costantino Nivola’s last project in Sardinia. It shows the sources of the project’s poetic qualities and the depth of the artist’s civic engagement. In 1985 Nivola was enlisted by Emanuele Sanna, the President of the Sardinian Regional Council, to work on the external spaces of the Regional Council’s new site, which was nearing completion. Collaborating with the building’s architect Pintori and its engineers, Atzeni, Farci, and Diaz, Nivola sought to situate an assortment of his large marble sculptures in a manner that would relate harmoniously with one another, and with their architectural and urban context.
The exhibit displays some concepts that Nivola had originally entertained for the project but that were later discarded. For example, a large sculpture, evoking a maternal form, very Mediterranean in spirit, was to be positioned in a central location amid a bed of live wheat—the latter symbolizing rural fecundity and vitality even amid the project’s urban setting.
Biography of an Artistic Project
Nivola at the Sardinian Regional Council Building (1985 – 2015)
Exhibition curated by Giuliana Altea and Antonella Camarda
Assistant curator: Davide Mariani
Graphics and installation design: AJF/ – Arch. Jari Franceschetto
