EIDOS PROJECT at CIVITA DI BAGNOREGIO
Exhibition : September 26 — October 10, 2026

Curated by: Fabio Sindici

*Civita among the clouds, courtesy Comune di Bagnoregio*

It is a curious omission that Civita di Bagnoregio, a weird wonder of a village at the center of the Italian peninsula, has not been, or rarely made an appearance, on the charts of the contemporary art world.

Civita itself is beyond picturesque: a dreamlike medieval cluster of buildings, walls, loggias and suspended gardens, consumed by erosions, on a rocky bluff pierced by ancient caves, standing alone in a valley of spectacular badlands.

The territory around is fractured by Calanchi, a labyrinth of geological formations that create a landscape similar to Burri crettos and Fontana cuts or to the rips in textiles more recently made by the Franciscan friar Sidival Fila, a renowned Italo-brazilian artist. The ground here looks like contemporary artwork itself.

Progetto Eidos, waiting for the performance at Il Giardino del Poeta, Civita.
Photo by Simona Cuomo Sabelli

We can call it a case of serendipity the fact that a group of twelve artists and performers decided to engage with the tormented beauty of Civita in a small art festival curated by Fabio Sindici with Adina Drinceanu and Giorgia Grassi.

The idea is that of a confrontation in delicacy. Progetto Eidos (Eidos Project) intends to be an exchange of visual emotions, an exercise in complicity between art and geology, art and history, art and philosophy and through different art forms and techniques.

*Progetto Eidos, Sean Gall Mindscape 2007 (detail) archival ink and acrylic paint on paper. Photo by Simona Cuomo Sabelli*

Ambitious? Maybe. But the project develops itself with playfulness and empathy. Modesty counterbalances hybris.

The irregular, thin lines traced by the Californian artist Sean Gall in his series called New Horizons were drawn before he saw Civita and the Calanchi but resonate in rhythm and resilience.

*Progetto Eidos, installation view at Casa Greco with artworks by Luciana Pretta (below) and Luca Di Luzio (above on the wall). Photo by Simona Cuomo Sabelli*

The colors that slides on one another in Luca Di Luzio paintings on wood evoke the strength of the landslides all around as the wooden painted sagome made by Brazilian painter Luciana Pretta resemble floating rafts, fragments of landscape that has been transformed in clouds.

Progetto Eidos, Luca Di Luzio, Abstract landscapes, acrylics on wood, 2026, on view in Casa Greco. Photo by Simona Cuomo Sabelli

The three artists are together in the show La Linea è Mobile (Moveable is the line). Their works cross their paths with the artworks of Noumeni, the other exhibition in Eidos, composed by sculptures and installations.

The two shows are not thought as separate but as connected and intertwined. So it is possible to find Gall's ondulated lines on black thick gesso on canvas close to the shining copper wires in a wall sculpture by Antonella Zazzera, an Italian artist grown up in Todi, few kilometers from Civita.

They both speaks of hidden energy.

The wooden clouds by Pretta confronts in the same space an installation in Noumeni by Dora Tass, an Italian artist who lives in Santa Fe: an hologram of a vintage telephone device pops up as a "ghost in the machine".

*Progetto Eidos, installation view in Casa Greco, artworks by Luciana Pretta, two painted wood sculptures, 2024, and Sean Gall, mindscape ink on paper 2015. Photo by Simona Cuomo Sabelli*

The Animal totems by Roman sculptor Valentina Sciarra revives a relation between biology and geology, past life and new life forms, shape and evocation as the scar individuated by the artist in a marble slab quote the crack where Casa Greco, the main venue of the exhibitions, is placed.

Cracks may be dangerous and fertile here. Just look at the ground. Just revive your imagination.

*Animal Totem by Valentina Sciarra, ceramic, brass and animal skull (2026) exhibited in Progetto Eidos at Civita di Bagnoregio, on the premise of Casa Greco*

Remnants of a fabulous animal, a face of a faun, ceramical fragments by Russian Tartar artist Gulia Lusikova sprout from a furniture like an incongruous trove.

Ground can be fertile of visions like the sky, in the land of Calanchi.

Noumena beyond the phenomena, artist's intuition has been called to play a role.

*Progetto Eidos, a cast iron sculpture by Dora Tass in the Cisterna Romana in piazza San Donato, Civita. Photo by Simona Cuomo Sabelli*

One of the most secret place in Civita is a Roman Cisterna under the ground of the main square: piazza San Donato, where twice a year a palio with donkeys is disputed.

You can access the cisterna through a shop: a series of steps end in a rounded space covered in coccio pesto, here a video installation counterpoints a pulsing stretched human eye with a fresh waterfall, almost abstract.

*Progetto Eidos, Obession (L'Amoureuse), video installation by Simona Cuomo Sabelli and Valentina Sciarra on view at Cisterna Romana, under Piazza San Donato, Civita. Photo by Simona Cuomo Sabelli*

The alternation is gentle and obsessive and secret.

Obsession (L'Amoureuse) by Simona Cuomo Sabelli and Valentina Sciarra pays hommage to the great season of Surrealism, starting with the title, from a poem by Paul Eluard.

*Progetto Eidos, Casa Greco with a marble sculpture (Scar) by Valentina Sciarra. Phoyo by Simona Cuomo Sabelli*

Another duo, composed by artist Voirhumain and poet Federica Ilacqua collaborated on an installation inside Casa Greco made of paper fragments forming a blanket of scribbles and verses surrounded by cushions shaped as exalted human body parts.

Fragments reconnected by love as the title of the installation suggests: "Scribble my heart".

*Progetto Eidos, installation view in Casa Greco, Scribble my heart by Federica Ilacqua and Voirhumain (2026) mixed media on paper and textile. Photo by Simona Cuomo Sabelli*

Lines, cracks may escape from Calanchi, from exhibition spaces, to find the skin of two young women in the one off performance "Sotto la pelle animali strani" (Strange animals under the skin).

Progetto Eidos, Sotto la pelle animali strani (Strange animals under the skin) performance at Il Giardino del Poeta by Alice De Crais, Giorgia Grassi, text by Fabio Sindici. Photo by Simona Cuomo Sabelli

Alice de Crais and Giorgia Grassi writes lines and symbols on one another body, while their voices narrate in fragments a story of broken desires and cured passions (adapted by the two performers from a text by Fabio Sindici).

Civita di Bagnoregio, view from the bridge, calanchi in the background, courtesy Comune di Bagnoregio

A poet comes to mind:
"These fragments I have shored against my ruins" writes T.S. Eliot at the end of The Waste Land.

EIDOS PROJECT
at
CIVITA DI BAGNOREGIO

September 26 — October 10, 2026

Curated by: Fabio Sindici

Artists:

Alice De Crais, Antonella Zazzera, Dora Tass, Federica Ilacqua, Giorgia Grassi, Gulia Lusikova, Luca Di Luzio, Luciana Pretta Dos Santos, Sean Gall, Simona Cuomo Sabelli, Valentina Sciarra, Voir Humain

EIDOS PROJECT at CIVITA DI BAGNOREGIO THE SEARCH FOR VISION

Flora Incognita Celebrating 15 Years of Espace_L