Algorithms, rivers, fibers, memories, identities: tomorrow, from 4 to 6 pm, Cittadellarte will host a public presentation of the artists hosted by UNIDEE Residency Programs, the Fondazione Pistoletto's artistic residency program that for over twenty-five years has welcomed international artists to spend research periods in Biella. Each artist developed their research during their stay in Biella—ranging from four weeks to two months thanks to a series of international partners*—engaging with Cittadellarte's vision and ecosystem, visiting the area, and exploring the contemporary Italian art scene. The event, free of charge, will be held at the UNIDEE Project Space, within the Fondazione Pistoletto, at Via Serralunga 27 in Biella. Visitors will be able to discover the research of five artists: Izz Al Jabari, Kaanchi Chopra, Laurane Desjonquères, Toni Kritzer, and Ginevra Landini.

The Algorithm's Gaze and the Right to Opacity
Izz Al Jabari, a Palestinian artist in residence thanks to a twenty-year partnership with the A.M. Qattan Foundation, presents his research on the neural gaze, referring to the widespread surveillance that observes us, learns, and predicts predetermined futures. Drawing inspiration from decolonial thought and his experience under occupation, the artist explores how algorithmic systems do more than simply observe, but also classify, order, and reduce human life to risk scores and target lists. Working with the memory of stone and the fragmentation of mirrors, Izz questions how it is possible to preserve the spaces that escape the algorithm's grasp. He asks how communities can maintain their right to opacity when transparency is weaponized. Between seeing and being seen, between data and dignity, he explores practices of refusal that keep us wonderfully, necessarily unknowable.

When Nature Is a Collaborator
Indian artist Kaanchi Chopra, selected for the residency in collaboration with the Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation, presents her artistic practice, which connects to the ecological and emotional potential of plant matter and animal fibers. Through a wool felt Conversation Chair that invites collective reflection, a botanical sculpture that maps Piedmont's biodiversity, and research on the transformation of biomass into biomaterials, her research explores the theme of material kinship. Considering nature as a collaborator, she intertwines local waste ecologies, Asian artisanal traditions, and the sensorial landscape of Biella's flora and abundant rivers.

Wood Meets Wool
Thanks to the Nouveau Grand Tour project, developed by the Institut Français Italia and the French Embassy in Italy, UNIDEE Residency Programs hosted artist Laurane Desjonquères. During the residency, Laurane explored the connections between nature, artisanal textile practices, and industrial heritage. The artist has explored the transformation of wool, placing spinning and knitting at the center of her practice. Inspired by Biella's textile history and the natural landscape, Laurane presents sculptures that combine wood and wool, in which the act of knitting becomes an act of material exploration. She also experiments with plant fibers, particularly nettle, from which she extracts fiber to develop new textures and sculptural forms.

The Sick River
Toni Kritzer's residency was supported by the Nouveau Grand Tour program and with the contribution of the Embassy and Consulate General of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Italy. Deepening her research on the ecologies of disability, the artist followed the course of the Cervo stream. In its cold waters, she traced layered histories of hydrotherapy, pollution, and renaturalization practices. Questioning narratives of illness and disability within ecosystems, she asks: "What does a sick river feel like? What does it mean to dry up, to overflow, to flow between rocks?" During her residency at Cittadellarte, Toni embroidered a stone blanket to lay her nonconforming, crip body on the riverbed.

A New Visual and Sensory Vocabulary
Finally, Ginevra Landini, an Argentine artist supported by Bienalsur, presents her research on the cosmology of relationships between materials and local mythologies. Working with found objects and textiles—such as sheets, fabrics, frames, sewing materials, and boxes—the artist explores how the imprints inscribed in these materials can be transformed, through drawing and sculpture, into a new visual and sensory vocabulary. Her research engages with the economy of means typical of Arte Povera, questioning how materials, once stripped of their original function, can become a shared language.

Cittadellarte's Director's Comment
"The University of Ideas, founded in the 1990s, is a global reference for Italian and international artists," stated Paolo Naldini, "whose practice is geared toward participating in changing ways of living with one another and with every other form of otherness, both human and otherwise. Every year, over 100 artists from around the world come to Cittadellarte, in Biella—the Archipelago City declared Creative by UNESCO—to share their research and learn from each other and from the experts of our school. They will return to their homelands to engage in the art of regeneration with their neighbors, because it is through active living that we construct coexistence as a great plural work of art, and many of them will maintain their connection with us and the local area."

*Thanks to the partners for the UNIDEE research residencies: Fondazione