How can we restore meaning to the essential gestures of existence? How can we, through art, reopen spaces for listening, empathy, and transformation? These are the questions at the heart of the new artistic residency promoted by UniCredit within the UNIDEE program of the Pistoletto Foundation. This is not merely an opportunity for production, but a true immersion — into the living spaces of Cittadellarte, its relational practices, the surrounding territory, and its latent energies. Two artists are involved in this edition: Despina Charitonidi and Davide Tagliabue (also known as Metrocubo). Though their research paths are different, they converge in a shared desire to question the present and suggest new visions.

Invisible waves: the research of Despina Charitonidi
A sculptor and performer, greek artist Despina Charitonidi works along the porous boundary between matter and sound, between the natural environment and human construction. “As a sculptor, many ideas emerge directly from the material itself,” she explains. “I’m interested in how we build the environment and, in doing so, how we simultaneously destroy what surrounds us. Who dominates whom? Do we dominate nature, or does nature dominate us?”

The project she proposed stems from a deep reflection on the communication systems of cetaceans — ancient forms of language that travel through water, enabling orientation, recognition, and survival. Today, however, these waves are disrupted by human-caused noise pollution, by the invisible violence that now pervades the oceans because of us. Starting from this rupture, the artist began shaping ceramic sculptures — “sound chambers”— that will be activated through a collective performance. “This performance is about how you lose yourself in a position, how you find yourself again, how you create a new language, how you communicate with others and discover new environments”, she explains. These are symbolic actions that, through ancestral sounds, give voice to experiences such as migration, otherness, and arrival.

Made from clay, and developed in dialogue with ceramicists, oceanographers, artisans, and researchers, the sound sculptures become spaces for listening and possibility. “I find it fascinating that we can use primary materials, like stone or earth, to create communication tools”. The forms that emerge are imbued with meaning: instruments to be played, but also inhabited, traversed — objects to breathe through, in harmony with one another.Thus, art becomes the means to rediscover a lost sense of togetherness, to reimagine — through sound and gesture — a possible community.

Sacred objects of the everyday: the research of Metrocubo
While Despina Charitonidi looks toward the sea and the deep breath of its inhabitants, Davide Tagliabue — known artistically as Metrocubo — sinks his hands into the earth, into food, into material culture. His project, Useful Chickens, is a raw and poetic reflection on our relationship with the animals we eat, and the radical objectification they are subjected to. “Today, the chicken is the most widespread living being on Earth”, the artist explains. “But it’s no longer an animal— it’s a product. It’s bred for efficiency. It grows four times faster than it used to, takes up less space, and produces more”.

With an approach that weaves together design, craftsmanship, gastronomy, and visual culture, Tagliabue seeks to dismantle this system. “Our grandparents used one hundred percent of what they ate”, he recalls. “Today, we discard, remove, forget”. From this comes the idea to organize activities focused on rediscovering the “forgotten” cuts of the chicken, opening up a space for critical reflection on our food systems. Alongside this, he incorporates practices for transforming animal waste — bones, eggshells — into new materials: bioceramics, natural resins, symbolic mixtures that become vessels of memory.

At the heart of the project is the creation of an iconic object: a zoomorphic reliquary, a small collectible cabinet titled Reliquorum. “I want to create an object that speaks to the grotesque side of industrial production and, at the same time, encourages a more empathetic reflection on how we nourish ourselves. I’d like to use artificial intelligence to generate serial variations of it, as if the machine were repeating the ritual gesture of creation. A pop totem, a contemporary relic”. Metrocubo isn’t looking for easy answers: “I eat meat too, but if I start eating and wasting less of it, becoming more aware, I can do my part”. His work doesn’t impose — it proposes. It doesn’t denounce — it invites. To think. To feel. To give thanks.

A first sowing
During the first weeks of the residency, the artists explored the spaces of Cittadellarte, met with researchers, artisans, and members of the Biella community, and began shaping initial ideas and forms through material research and studies of local traditions and knowledge. It was a process of sowing — made of encounters, observations, readings, and small gestures.
With the conclusion of the first phase (March–April), the second phase (May–June) now begins. Despina and Davide will continue their work in the UNIDEE studios, further developing their research in preparation for the final public presentation scheduled for June 28th, as part of the 27th edition of Arte al Centro, Cittadellarte’s annual exhibition.
This is a journey that moves through matter, sound, and life — an invitation to look with new eyes at what we touch, hear, and eat every day. And, all too often, forget.