FROM ULASSAI TO SANSEPOLCRO: THREAD AND TEXTILE-PLASTIC MATTER TAKE CENTER STAGE AT CASERMARCHEOLOGICA

An invisible yet profound weave stretches between Sardinia and Tuscany, spun from gestures, interweavings, and community narratives. 45 years after Legarsi alla montagna (To Bind Oneself to the Mountain) – the 1981 collective action with which Maria Lai rewrote the history of public and participatory art in Italy – the concept of art as a vehicle for relationship and listening returns to center stage with the project “From Ulassai to Sansepolcro: Art and Relationship,” organized by CasermArcheologica in close synergy with the Fondazione Stazione dell’Arte in Ulassai. Since September 26, the spaces of the former barracks on Via Aggiunti in Sansepolcro have been hosting Sardinian artists Daniela Frongia and Salvatore Delogu in residency for a journey of research and site-specific interventions rooted in the context and memory of the Upper Tiber Valley – an experience that will culminate with its opening to the public on Saturday, October 10, 2026, and an exhibition open through January 30, 2027.

For those who closely follow the languages of Fiber Art, this event represents a moment of profound exhibition convergence. The heart of the textile journey beats within the research of Daniela Frongia (b. 1981), an artist from San Gavino Monreale who trained at the “Carlo Contini” State Art Institute in Oristano and graduated in Set Design and Contemporary Art History from the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence. Frongia articulates fiber art across a wide range of media – performance, indoor and outdoor installations, video art, and photography – pushing thread, weaving, and plaiting far beyond the boundaries of craft to create true sculptural and environmental structures. Her works – held in public and private collections and exhibited in venues such as the Ulassai Biennial of Contemporary Art (2026), the Linificio e Canapificio Nazionale (2023), the Organica Museum in the Limbara Park (2022), Paris (2022), Busto Arsizio (2020), and the MAN Museum in Nuoro (2019) – emerge from time, repeated gestures, and the direct relationship between matter and space. At CasermArcheologica, her exploration of thread engages in dialogue with the sculpture of Salvatore Delogu, an artist and goldsmith who earned his diploma in 2014 from the Ciusa Romagna Art Institute and graduated in 2018 with a degree in Visual Arts from the Academy of Fine Arts in Ravenna, where he also served as a laboratory assistant. Drawing on a background spanning visual arts, goldsmithing, and exhibitions such as Roma Arte in Nuvola (2022) and a solo show at Casa Ciusa in Nuoro (2022), Delogu works with iron, earth, and concrete, offering a sculptural counterpart that shares Fiber Art’s epistemological value of “making” and material experimentation.

The dimension of textile making as a tool for storytelling and wonder will find its moment of theoretical depth on the afternoon of Saturday, October 10. At 5:00 PM, ahead of the official opening set for 6:00 PM, Marco Peri, Director of the Fondazione Stazione dell’Arte in Ulassai, will lead the talk “Stories of the Distracted God: Images, Readings, and Visions to Exercise Wonder.” The presentation will revolve around the display of a copy of Maria Lai’s artist’s book Il dio distratto (The Distracted God), created in 1990 as a fully sewn cloth book and later reproduced in printed format. Devoid of alphabetic text, the work entrusts its narrative entirely to threads, stitching, and fabrics, touching on the core themes of the Sardinian artist’s poetics: myth, fairytale, weaving, writing, memory, and landscape. It will be a special opportunity to approach a masterpiece of textile narrative through listening and imagination, uncovering the path that led the Stazione dell’Arte into dialogue with CasermArcheologica as part of a project supported by the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze.