the street is our gallery

The first part of Cagliari Urbanfest recently ended in Sant’Elia neighborhood: it was a week-long celebration of street art, participatory art and urban regeneration.

The festival organized by Asteras, now in its third year, once again brought together artists, locals and visitors to celebrate sociability, to share reflections, and to join up for taking care of public spaces.

After two days of social photography with the Racconti di Sant’Elia project by Alessandra Cecchetto, an immersion in the streets of the neighborhood together with the inhabitants who wanted to tell their stories, the Urbanfest came to life with the interventions of international street artists Tellas and Marco Réa.

On the large wall of via Utzeri overlooking the Gulf of Angels, Tellas painted a stunning mural entitled Sunset. The Sardinian artist created a work that is a synthesis of countless Cagliari sunset photographs, including the several ones taken in Sant’Elia neighborhood. He thus created a score of geometric shapes with a thousand tonal gradations of blue, yellow and pink, scattered by a pattern composed of organic elements that refer to the numerous palm trees in the surrounding landscape. Armed with rollers, brushes and colors, Tellas constructed a changing composition whose shades vary according to the incidence of light on the surface of the wall, so that at every hour of the day it seems to be in front of ever-new artwork.

Bread is the title of Marco Réa’s mural that took shape on an electrical cabin of via Schiavazzi. Réa’s artwork is included in “Cabine d’Autore”, urban regeneration, sustainability, and proximity to communities’ project promoted by E-Distribuzione, whose goal is to transform electrical infrastructures into real canvases for Street Art. The over five hundred mural artworks spread across Italy constitute an open-air museum, still under construction, aimed at promoting urban sustainability and encouraging the development of cultural awareness. The mural by Réa, created with the stencil technique, represents a universal element that embraces all of humankind: bread, a symbol of life and sharing. Little pieces of Carasau, a typical Sardinian crisp bread, float on the walls of the cabin, following the verses of the nursery rhyme “Il Pane” by Gianni Rodari, taken from the 1960 book “Filastrocche in cielo e in terra”, to reach the faces of two young people with dreamy eyes, symbol of hope for a better future. Réa paints his crumbs gold because bread is the most precious and essential good of life, much like hope, which nourishes the soul and encourages positive changes.

The first part of Cagliari Urbanfest ended with the urban happening #4 FUGA created by the Collective FUORISEDE, formed by the artists Nicko Straniero, Tonino Mattu, Gianluigi Concas, Michele Pau, and Amirah Suboh. A small building at the entrance to the Parco degli Anelli, which was in a state of total neglect and decay, was restored together with the volunteers of the Confraternita di Misericordia of Sant’Elia and returned to public use. This space, originally built to offer services to the community and then abandoned, was therefore transformed by FUORISEDE into a pop-up gallery with the temporary installation of a series of artworks that investigate the meaning of work in contemporary society under multiple aspects, between references to traditional crafts and old and new alienations, offering visitors unusual food for thought.

The festival is set to return on January 9th, featuring its second part divided into various events: three visual arts exhibitions, panels with scholars, authors, and cultural operators, guided visits to the exhibitions, walking tours of the Sant’Elia murals, and the usual talk with the artists of the Urbanfest.

Cagliari Urbanfest ‐ Generazioni Metropolitane partners are Fondazione di Sardegna,
E‐Distribuzione, Orientare, Fondazione per l’Arte Bartoli Felter, Spazio e Movimento, LILA Cagliari, Confraternita di Misericordia di Cagliari-Sant’Elia, YouTG.net, Blocal ‐ Travel & Street Art blog, Street Art Cities, I Support Street Art. With the patronage of Regione Autonoma della Sardegna, Presidente del Consiglio regionale della Sardegna, Città Metropolitana di Cagliari, Comune di Cagliari, Università degli Studi di Cagliari.

More information and news:

www.associazioneasteras.it/cagliari-urbanfest/

Facebook: @CagliariUrbanfest – Instagram: @cagliariurbanfest

Photo credits: Massimiliano Frau; Associazione Asteras.