The nonprofit cultural association MARES presents the first edition of RUINS, the final exhibition of the art residency program featuring Jade Blackstock, Giovanni Chiamenti, Luca Pagin and Teresa Prati. The exhibition, curated by Amina Berdin and Tatiana Palenzona with the collaboration of the curatorial duo Lemonot, will open Sept. 2025 at the Complesso Monumentale di Santa Croce in Bosco Marengo (Alessandria).
MARES, founded by curators Tatiana Palenzona and Amina Berdin together with entrepreneur Michelangelo Buzzi, was created with the intention of enhancing the Alessandria area through a model of artistic and cultural education that fosters dialogue and networking with local communities.
RUINS is configured as a diffuse exhibition route that crosses different spaces of the Santa Croce Complex, inviting visitors to an experience of discovery and reflection. During the residency, artists and curators developed an intense dialogue with the history and nature of the place, but also between their own practices, resulting in a web of works that confront and interact with each other. The result is a fabric of narratives that weaves together personal memories, ancient legends and historical traces. The exhibition offers the public a reflection on the concept of ruin, understood not only as a trace of the past, but also as an opportunity for rebirth and regeneration.
With this initiative, MARES reaffirms its mission to support emerging art, promoting international dialogues and building solid connections between artists and territory. A central goal is the reactivation of the Monumental Complex of Santa Croce, to enhance it as a cultural hub.
The three-year residency program (2025-2027) attracted more than 400 applications from more than 40 countries, and selected for the first edition were Jade Blackstock (1993, Birmingham), a performer who investigates the intersections between body, matter and environment, constructing dialogues between interiority and exteriority; Giovanni Chiamenti (1992, Verona), whose research combines art, geology, biology, biotechnology and chemistry to imagine scenarios beyond the Anthropocene and new forms of coexistence among species; Luca Pagin (2002, Dolo) explores personal and shared memories, creating unprecedented links between the individual and culture, with attention to the body and its preservation; Teresa Prati (1999, Novi Ligure) works with sculpture, video and installations, focusing on the relationship between human beings and objects and the affective meanings they take on; Lemonot (Sabrina Morreale, 1990 and Lorenzo Perri, 1989), a curatorial duo active between Italy and London, who combine architecture and performing arts as tools to rediscover and celebrate the forms of theatricality inherent in everyday life. In parallel, they teach at the Royal College of Art in London.
The Complex of Santa Croce, which has hosted workshops, meetings and moments of artistic creation, boasts a stratified history: from its origins linked to the Celto-Ligurian population of the Marici, from which the name of the MARES association derives, to the foundation of the Complex desired by Pope Pius V in 1566, who commissioned works entrusted to Giorgio Vasari and Ludovico degli Albani. Over the centuries, the complex has taken on multiple functions: residence for veterans, military depot, reformatory, until hosting in 2004 the World Political Forum organized by Mikhail Gorbachev. Today, thanks to the Friends of Holy Cross Association, the site is once again open to the public and finds new vitality through collaborations such as the one with MARES, which renews its community and cultural vocation.
A catalog of the exhibition, published by Allemandi, will be published in November 2025, with critical texts edited by Berdin and Palenzona, a visual essay signed by Lemonot together with photographer Lorenzo Morandi, in-depth features on the artists and a rich iconographic apparatus.
The MARES project is realized with the support of Intesa Sanpaolo as Main Partner, under the patronage of the Municipality of Bosco Marengo and in collaboration with the Friends of Santa Croce Association.
“The inauguration of Ruins marks the first point of arrival and departure of this three-year project that has the ambitious intention of revitalizing the Alessandria area through the creation of a new cultural hub,” say the founders of MARES. “The exhibition is our response to what has remained intact over the centuries, thus the ruins, though not intended as an end, but as a starting point for new narratives. We want art to bring new life and visibility to an extraordinary heritage, creating meaningful connections between the art world and the local community.”
The exhibition will be open to the public from September 20, 2025 at the Monumental Complex of Santa Croce, Bosco Marengo (AL) until October 5, 2025. After the opening day, visits will be by appointment only.
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| The Monumental Complex of Santa Croce in Bosco Marengo is reborn with a three-year art residency project |
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