The project
A place that embraces two souls
OCA intends to be a cultural laboratory, where not only visual arts but a multiplicity of disciplines and actors find space. The project thus aims to be a place for reflection, research and regeneration, calling to act and relate to each other in a transversal way, scientists, philosophers, artists, architects, anthropologists, poets, writers.
Here art integrates with nature, with the place that hosts it, and awaits the visitor at the end of a path, to propose a new world, to be discovered and created together. In harmony with the territory of the reserve, Art Director Emanuele Montibeller proposes an experiential path in nature that enriches the enjoyment of the landscape through exhibitions and environmental installations, which dialogue with nature itself.
How will we inhabit the world?
Living is more than living inside a place: it is making it our home, in the sense of shelter, of protection, but also of human relations. Those who have a home have their own identity and a specific place in society. If by home we mean the whole world, we understand well how the environmental issue-which today has fortunately come to the forefront of public opinion with great urgency-cannot be only about the environment in the strict sense. It becomes a cultural, anthropological and social issue. It is on this reasoning that the OCA project rests its foundation. It is an ambitious project, which, starting from a place that is only apparently peripheral, intends to make it a metaphor for the entire planet. It is therefore a special place that wants to become a cultural workshop, where not only the visual arts, but a multiplicity of disciplines and actors will find space. A workshop that will try to provide answers to the essential question: how will we inhabit the world? The theme, as we said, has to be approached from multiple domains: the scientific one, but also the creative one. Art has a very important role in all this, because it represents the identity foundation of a society. Without culture, identity is not created. OCA wants to inspire reflection, research, it wants to be a self-generating place.
2023: the first season of OCA
From the former came the journey "La Grande Oasi. The way we live, now," a photographic exhibition created for OCA and curated by Giovanna Calvenzi, with a series of large shots that feature humans and the territory as protagonists, in a dialogue in which human presence is the very measure of the landscape.
Swedish artist Svensson, on the other hand, through his de-structured flags in the installation 'Home of the world' suggested to us a new way of 'inhabiting' nature, in which the environment is a home without boundaries, nor maps or distinctions. It is 'our' home that we do not own and in which we must learn to live in harmony. Two different perspectives, both capable of asking questions, leaving the visitor with the experience of an answer.
2024: Tayou's exhibition and the realization of the first works of the pathway
2024 was the year of Pascale Marthine Tayou's major exhibition “Love Letter,” created in collaboration with Galleria Continua and curated by Marco Bazzini and Emanuele Montibeller.
Within the exhibition space made out of the former stable, Tayou, who has always been interested in environmental issues, created works made of mostly recycled common materials to make people reflect on the coexistence between man and nature and the effects of Western hyper-production. The exhibition brought together a heterogeneous and diverse set of sculptural forms, artifacts, objects and energies of various kinds that offered a multifaceted visual language, based on archetypes, made or found objects, with references to both the mastery of craftsmanship and the remnants of a consumer society.
Throughout the year, meanwhile, work went on on the creation of the path and the first works conceived, designed and built to be an integral part of the landscape.
2025: the opening of the art path
The path is presented as the stages of a narrative: each installation, each work dialogues with the others, relaunching the underlying theme and declining it according to the sensitivity, geographical origin, culture of origin, and human and professional experience of each artist and architect involved in the project.
THE MUSEUM
Home of the world
