Throughout 2026, the Journal of Cittadellarte hosts a series of interviews with collaborators of the Foundation, all invited to respond to the same set of questions. Cittadellarte in the Mirror - this is the name of the column - functions as an exercise in listening and self-reflection that moves across different roles, practices and sensibilities, offering a plural portrait of the Cittadellarte organism. The questions address some of the most urgent issues of our time - from social transformation to responsibility, from education to indifference, from the risks of artistic action to the possibility of reactivating empathy - and act as a mirror: they do not seek definitive answers, but ask those who respond to take a position, to expose themselves, and to question their role in the present.

In this third installment, the mirror turns toward Francesca Castagnetti, Project Manager of Cittadellarte’s Nutrimento Office and coordinator of the Food, Agriculture and Hospitality Island of Biella Città Arcipelago. Her path brings together practices of territorial care, research into Indigenous knowledge systems and environmental education. Trained as an ethnobotanist, with studies ranging from the history and philosophy of South Asian religions to Indigenous studies and political ecology, Castagnetti combines her work at the Foundation with continuous teaching activities, guided educational walks, and initiatives introducing people of all ages to the world of plants, herbalism and ecology. Since December 2025, she has also been an officially certified environmental guide.

In the conversation that follows, her perspective moves through the crisis of the major terms of sustainability and transition, restoring centrality to relationships—between human and non-human beings, between territories, forgotten histories and communities in transformation. For Francesca, art is inseparable from empathy and from the responsibility to imagine alternative visions of the world, capable of mobilizing action without falling into simplification or the spectacle of pain.

The year 2025 comes to a close as one in which the word “transition” seems to have lost strength, replaced by a widespread sense of fatigue and a return to logics of power, war and closure. In this context, does it still make sense to speak of responsible social transformation, or do we need to change our language and rethink our practices?
I believe that abstract terms such as transition and sustainability have led us, for far too long, to remain excessively vague about what is actually necessary and who should be on the front lines of change. At the political level—understood as the management of public affairs—I see a profound lack of imagination, and therefore of long-term vision. Within our linear understanding of history and human development, we tend to think that the only possible form of evolution and economic growth is the one that has dominated the last few centuries: the one that took us from hunter-gatherers, to farmers, to… consumers. But is that really the case?
The models of exploitation that surround us are not—and never have been—the only possible ones. On the contrary, it is time to reclaim forgotten histories: the stories of the defeated and the marginalized, alternative narratives to the dominant culture. I find fields such as archaeology and Indigenous architecture particularly fascinating, as they show us how a wide variety of social and economic organizations and ways of inhabiting the landscape have existed—and still exist. Our creativity is far more layered and profound than the current state of affairs might lead us to believe.

This year again, Cittadellarte has worked both locally and globally—from China to borderland Europe, from the Mediterranean to East Asia. Bringing an installation or a demopraxic work into places charged with history, conflict or symbolism exposes art to unpredictable interpretations. How important is it for the Foundation to accept this risk?
Today more than ever, every gesture binds us to one another across time and space. The food we eat, the objects we use, the technologies that connect the world are only possible thanks to a complex web of relationships shaped by equally complex historical processes. This means that, whether we like to admit it or not, much of what is commonly perceived as well-being is only possible through the misery and exploitation of others.
Think of the impact of resource extraction—from the materials in our phones to those required for the so-called “ecological transition”: there is no war that does not conceal extractive interests. This awareness inevitably invests us with a moral duty to take risks, to expose ourselves, to take a stand. By definition, I do not believe that an art aimed at social change can avoid the risk of becoming implicated.

In 2025, what does it mean to educate toward responsibility in a world where algorithms, artificial intelligence and automation seem to take up ever more space, reducing conscious human action and, in this sense, authorship?
For me, it means educating toward relationship: with ourselves, with others, and with life around us in all its forms. Both in the work we do through the Nutrimento Office and Let Eat Bi, and in my profession as an ethnobotanist and environmental educator, I have often observed that one of the most common needs is the need to feel part of something.
This desire for belonging operates on many levels: from relationships, to family, to group, to community, to nature. Individualism is a recent and strange invention—the great lie of modernity. And yet nothing in this world exists in isolation from the rest. We are the result of infinite relationships that bind us to past, present and future, and above all to one another, human and non-human alike. Every decision we make has an impact on what surrounds us. Shouldn’t this alone be enough to remind us of the immense responsibility we bear as individuals, as societies, as a species?

During your time at Cittadellarte, what do you feel you have unlearned? Is there a belief you would now let go of?
That nothing ever happens in Biella. I say this jokingly, of course, but it is true that Cittadellarte has shown me how the vision of a few can transform a place and generate a community united around shared goals. When I returned to Italy after more than a decade abroad, I never imagined that it would be precisely in Biella that I would find such an extraordinary laboratory of ideas and crossroads of stories.
And this is true not only within the walls of Cittadellarte, but also in the local farming community—people who work with and for the land—whom I came to know both through the Let Eat Bi Wednesday market and through my role as coordinator of the Food, Agriculture and Hospitality thematic island of the Biella Città Arcipelago project.

Let us imagine Cittadellarte as a living organism. Which part feels most fragile today? And which part is more mature than you would have imagined?
Cittadellarte reminds me of a forest-organism: just as a single tree does not make a forest, a single project does not make Cittadellarte. Its diversity is a sign of maturity and strength. The most fragile part is the mycelium—the network that enables the continuous flow of communication and nutrient exchange among species, that through decomposition ensures soil fertility and quality, and supports the emergence of new life.
Oops, I couldn’t help talking about plants again this time either!

We live in a time in which we are exposed daily to images of extreme suffering, yet we often remain motionless. What kind of emotion is indifference? If indifference were a work of art, would you destroy it like Pistoletto’s broken mirror?
Indifference is what allows us to survive in a context of constant perceived threat, driven by unnatural rhythms and deep inequality. Remaining in a perpetual “fight or flight” mode would require an enormous and continuous expenditure of energy. In this sense, indifference is also a form of desensitization to pain.
It is not so different from the stress-response mechanisms and chronic inflammatory states enacted by our bodies. It is what prevents us from reacting to the world on fire around—and within—us. Rather than destroying it, we should all look carefully into the mirror and accept seeing our own faces reflected there as well. Not to blame ourselves, but to allow that reflection to mobilize us into action.

In dominant media narratives of conflict, numbers often replace faces. What responsibility does art have in restoring humanity where political language erases it? Can art reactivate empathy without falling into the spectacle of suffering? Especially considering that the Oxford Dictionary’s word of the year for 2025 is “Rage Bait”.
Art has access to a vast array of languages—the potential to be universal. Today more than ever, art can amplify those voices that, for one reason or another, find no space in our society. Personally, I cannot imagine art without empathy.

When you turn off the lights in your office, what emotion remains switched on?
The desire to share and to carry forward another vision of the world—not in opposition, but as an alternative.