Exhibitions
Permanent exhibitions
Fragments of stories
from the Children's Institute of the
Province of Turin
A better life.
Fragments of stories from the Children's Institute of the Province of Turin
curated by Alessandro Bulgini
in collaboration with Città Metropolitana di Torino
The project presented at Flashback Habitat in Corso Giovanni Lanza 75 in Turin, whose title is A Better Life. Fragments of Stories from the Institute for Children of the Province of Turin is not to be considered an exhibition but rather an artwork and an act of love. A. Bulgini
The project aims to give voice to that multitude of worlds that have intertwined in the halls of the structure, a former orphanage in Turin, through glimpses of the stories of some of the protagonists who, firsthand, have experienced that place like the children, now adults, the nannies, the employees. The exhibition, curated by the artist and director of Flashback Habitat Alessandro Bulgini, aims to be a collective work, a choral work where history, emotions, art and life intertwine. An exhibition that tells intimate and personal stories, but incredibly universal because they are linked to concepts that touch us closely such as birth, family, identity, through original fragments, collected thanks to the collaboration of those who were there at the time, documents recovered in the historical archives of the Province of Turin and direct testimonies. The exhibition aims to be a complex, human, social and above all artistic fresco, which enhances everyone's lives by making them works of art, in the spirit and poetics of Flashback Habitat.
The exhibition is spread over the rooms on the third floor of Pavilion B in Corso Lanza. Each room wants to be a microworld where you can immerse yourself and enter the stories told. Personal and universal narratives at the same time, collective works that speak of life. Each room consists of audio-video portraits of the "natives" who answer the question "Can you tell me?" and they do it in profile: a position that suggests turning outside, elsewhere or perhaps towards another self. The talking portraits are accompanied by components dating back to a photographic exhibition on site set up when the orphanage closed. Finally, each room is enriched with a map-story with stratifications of meanings thanks to photographs and documents from public and private archives.
The IPI, inaugurated in 1958 by President Gronchi, every year hosted about three hundred boys and girls awaiting adoption, often born in corso Lanza 75, and then given up for adoption, generally before the age of three. Today many of those children, who have become adults, frequent the place and the activities of Flashback Habitat, recognizing their origins, their first home in Corso Lanza, enriching the new life of the place itself with stories and emotions.
mater
2023, Artist's Light, Constellation
by Alessandro Bulgini
Shaped sign with flat letters in painted aluminum, flex led lighting - 10mx2.78m
Roof of Pavilion C
Within the project: Luci d'Artista, Costellazioni, in 2023 Alessandro Bulgini's work mater arrived at the Flashback Habitat headquarters. Installed on the roof of Palazzina C and visible from Corso Vittorio Emanuele II to Porta Nuova station, the work is dedicated to those who were born more than forty years ago in the current headquarters of Flashback Habitat, the former orphanage of the Province of Turin active until the 1980s.
The light stands out on the roof of the oldest and highest villa of the former Institute, becoming a beacon in the darkness.
“Usually works are gifts, this one is even more so”
The story of this work begins when Alessandro Bulgini (artist and current artistic director of Flashback Habitat) entered the former Institute for Children of the Province of Turin in Corso Giovanni Lanza 75, a space entrusted to the Flashback Association, in particular when he learned of its history. A story that began in 1953 when the Province decided to open the Institute to meet the needs caused by large-scale immigration and the large number of women forced to leave their newborns in foster care. This space welcomed them for thirty years and then, to overcome this system, the space was closed. Having learned of this story, the artist decided to take action to recognize a place of welcome for those who were born here more than forty years ago, giving them a space where they could meet again. From the first contacts he took on the role of guide inside the four buildings, taking them to every interstice of the complex and making them retrace memories and suggestions that were so dear to them.
“Retracing the spaces, some of them touch the walls in search of the pictorial stratification that saw them present at their birth. This is why, with the passage of time, the idea that the mother was present in this place through absence took shape in me. The walls become epidermis. It is as if the mother had left, in the short time she was here, her own imprint. For this simple but profound reason I thought of giving them a clear indication that was materially visible, a work that would bring light to a desire”.
The words of Alessandro Bulgini.
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.
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.
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.
Temporary exhibitions
Neverland Gaza
Curated by Alessandro Bulgini
from 17 /04/2025, every Thursday with mandatory reservation
Pav. C - Zone closed to visitors, second floor
'Neverland Gaza' has been created as a space of proximity and resonance.
An intimate installation built from everyday objects donated by people - carpets, chairs, lamps, a camping stove - that become instruments of relationship. The work stages an imaginary ritual inspired by the gesture of sharing tea in the ruins of Gaza during Ramadan. In this suspended and disarmed context, art becomes habitable, real, deeply our space.
"A work of art does not describe, it does not comment, it does not communicate" - writes Christian Caliandro in the text supporting the project - "it does not deal with a subject: it lives it, it goes through it, it experiences it. And this something is no longer a subject. It is reality".
The installation can be visited
every Thursday at 8 p.m. and 9 p.m.
Free entrance with mandatory reservation
(maximum of 30 people)
tel: +39 393 64 55 301
mail: info@flashback.to.it
Fondato sul lavoro
Curated by Alessandro Bulgini
from an idea of Francesco Sena
texts by Ginevra Pucci
03 /04/2025 - 27/07/2025
Pav. B - Ground floor
artworks by: Turi Rapisarda, Lorenzo Viani, Philatelic Stamps, Gianluca and Massimiliano De serio, Luca Vitone, Anonimous Indian Prisoners, Sandro Mele, Antique Ceramist Attico, Santiago Sierra, Ceramist Cina Yuan Dinasty, Pierfrancesco Lafratta, Carlo Fornara, Giuseppe Santomaso, Artist Cina Ming Dinasty, Alessandro Bulgini, Gerhard van Steenwijck, Giuseppe Pennasilico, Domenico Antonio Mancini, Leonard D. Abbott and Helen G. Haskell, Igor Grubic, Renato Guttuso, Ottavia Brown, Arcangelo Sassolino, Cosimo Calabrese, Francesco Sena.
Work is at the heart of the social pact, the founding principle of the Italian Republic and the engine of collective history.
But what kind of work? For whom and at what cost?
The exhibition "Fondato sul lavoro" explores the subject in all its complexity, revealing its contradictions and transformations.
At a historical moment like the present, marked by precariousness, inequalities and epochal changes, art offers a critical view of the working condition, giving voice to those who are often invisible.
Work, as the basis of dignity and social construction, has always been a central theme for art, which has represented its transformations, sacrifices and contradictions. Throughout the ages, artists have narrated the daily toil, the precariousness and the human dramas associated with work, making visible those realities that are often overlooked or invisible. Bringing to light what is hidden, ignored or forgotten is precisely one of the tasks that Flashback energetically undertakes. In a time like this, when deaths at work constitute a national and global emergency, this theme takes on even greater relevance. The theme is fully in keeping with Flashback's wider commitment to creating an ongoing dialogue between art and life, between works and everyday life.
Flashback constantly seeks to use the art of all times to read and interpret the present. The works in the exhibition, with their ability to capture reality, create a fresco with an immediacy that transcends time. From this perspective, both the historicised and the contemporary works become bearers of universal stories, capable of speaking to our present. Through a direct and sincere visual language, the exhibition invites us to reflect on how, despite social and technological changes, many of the challenges associated with work remain unresolved. Art thus becomes not only a means of representation, but also a means of connecting, remembering and questioning, keeping alive the values, memories and struggles of those who have dedicated their lives to work.
ERO NESSUNA
by Sandro Mele, Site specific installation
31 october 2024 – tbd
Pav. C - Il Circolino
On the occasion of Flashback Art Fair 2024, the artist Sandro Mele (also author of the fair's guiding image) takes up and re-elaborates Ero Nessuna, the intervention conceived for the Fondazione VOLUME! in Rome in December 2023. The exhibition, in the halls of the Circolino di Flashback Habitat's creative reception area, starts from the personal stories of Fioralba Duma and Karen Ducusin (two girls born from Albanian and Filipino parents, who grew up in Italy without citizenship) to give life to a story told through images that aims to sensitise those who do not know and those who do not want to know, inviting the spectator to reflect on the concept of citizenship by retracing the history that led our constituent fathers to write Article 3 of the Italian Constitution: ‘All citizens have equal social dignity and are equal before the law’.
Sandro Mele (Melendugno, LE, 1970), a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice, began his career in the studio of Roman artist Fabio Mauri. Through his work, he has always dealt with political and social dynamics linked to current events, starting from everyday life experiences and stories. In addressing these topics, he seeks a human and profound reflection, with the intention of offering a genuine point of view, without contamination. Over the years he has used painting, video, photography, installations and sound settings to shape an exhibition structure capable of creating a dialogue with the viewer.
Opera Viva Barriera di Milano,
The Billboard
10th edition CAMOUFLAGE
Exhibition project curated by Alessandro Bulgini
Pav.B - the stairs
Once again this year, the exhibition of the ‘Opera Viva Barriera di Milano, The Billboard’ project will be on display along the stairs of Pavilion B.
The project expands among the various editions that have followed one another since 2015, with a focus on the ground floor dedicated to the 2024 edition CAMOUFLAGE, whose objective was to create a choral operation aimed at expressing discomfort through the public manifestation of its opposite. Seven artists and their posters that together make up a single denunciation, a single work of dissent.
‘Opera Viva Barriera di Milano, The Billboard’ was born in 2015 in Turin and uses a municipal advertising space (cimasa 56530). Inside the spaces of Flashback Habitat, all the posters are returned to the public in an installation that extends on the stairs of Pav.B.