Vivarium [der. from the Latin Vivo]

is the permanent exhibition that inhabits the external space of Flashback Habitat. The idea of also populating the powerful green area of 9000 square meters and transforming it into a real art park in metamorphosis and constant becoming was born in 2022, as soon as we entered what has become Habitat for Contemporary Cultures. The works of art are inserted into the space, to stay and "put down roots", giving life to a harmonious fusion where everything that is uniform comes from the dialogue between the artist and the habitat. In the natural environment composed of history and people, Flashback adopts the works that the artists leave in trust to the ecosystem.

Walking through the park of Flashback Habitat one encounters Chairs in Space (1995) by Fabio Cascardi, an installation in steel and anti-rumble paint inaugurated in April 2023 and recently moved to the highest point in front of Pavilion B. Also from 2023 is Mushroom Forest by Michel Vecchi, who, using wood and logs salvaged from the park, creates colourful mushrooms of surprise, magic and curiosity. On the occasion of Flashback Art Fair 2024, the work is enriched with sounds that the artist himself recorded in the park, transforming them into a natural soundtrack. Michel Vecchi is an artist from Valle d'Aosta who lives and works in Ibiza.

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Also from 2023 is the work Tout se tient by Luisa Raffaelli, also created by enlivening elements already present in the park. The artist transforms a structure that acts as a sling and the protection, also metaphorical, is composed of innocent pipes that give a sense of care, protection and safety, coloured gold to emphasise the protective function. Finally, Carl Von Pfeil has created four site-specific anthropomorphic sculptures in 2024, with materials found in the park, that dialogue with the natural ecosystem: Woman with Open Arms, Wandering Man, Chick with Goldilocks and

One-Eyed Painter.

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After the large light installation mater, on the occasion of Flashback Art Fair 2024, Flashback Habitat's artistic director Alessandro Bulgini also enriches Vivarium with Light of the Apocalypse, a work that weaves personal memory, history and universal reflection through powerful symbolism and intense colours. A large beech tree - dead, but present not only as memory - painted bright red and made extraordinary by lights and luminous spheres is the symbol of a historical and present time in which we are constantly immersed. Each of Bulgini's creations draws from the pre-existing to revive in the present and, as in a flashback, brings past time and present time into dialogue. Red, omnipresent in his works from 1993 to 2000, becomes a colour of universal connection: a symbol of passion, war, life and blood, it brings together the deepest meanings of the human condition. The centuries-old tree, dead due to climatic imbalances, becomes the beating heart of the work: the artist decides not to ‘cut it down’, but to transform it into a sculpture, evoking a crown or the effect of an object falling into water and generating splashes. Dyed red, it becomes a symbol of an alien or nuclear explosion, with orange luminous spheres crystallising the contradictions of our time. Night adds a mystical dimension to the work: the light it emanates evokes the eclipse, an event that in popular belief was a source of terror and magic. On display at the entrance to Pavilion B, six photographs of Bulgini's daily life taken at different times complete the work: filtered in the same red as the sculpture, they amplify its sense of apocalypse.

Light of the Apocalypse embodies the tension between the sacred and the profane, between rebirth and destruction, inviting the viewer to reflect on the search for Equilibrium through contrasting worlds. 

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