At its third-to-last edition, the artist residency program A dimora was created within the broader cultural-based territorial and urban regeneration plan Montagna Fiorentina, promoted in the municipalities of Londa and San Godenzo together with LAMA Impresa Sociale, a Florentine organization active for over eighteen years in social innovation and in supporting organizations and places through sustainable transformation processes.  At the heart of the project lies the medieval village of Londa, nestled in the Tuscan-Romagnol Apennines. With just over 1,800 inhabitants, nowadays the town is engaged in reaffirming the mountain as a place of well-being and socio-economic innovation.

Chiara Gambirasio, “Spaesaggio”, 2025, cemento, sabbia, ferro, pigmenti. Ph @Eleonora Saviozzi. Courtesy A dimora

In this context, A dimora conceives artistic practices as tools capable of strengthening or activating relationships between the community and the shared identity of the territory, stimulating participatory dynamics, creatively using marginal spaces and enhancing the socio-cultural and natural heritage of the Valdisieve. The slow rhythms of rural life and the summer duration of the residencies have encouraged the research processes but, above all, have fostered the exchange of knowledge and reflections. According to the program’s curator, Martina Aiazzi Mancini, the artist figure becomes a catalyst for change, starting from the ability to intercept the urgencies of the present with their gaze. Only interventions born from sharing – rather than imposed unilaterally from above – can prosper alongside the local community, leaving a tangible imprint: «Residencies do not solve problems, but they face them from another perspective, to rethink, to rejoice, and to begin again».

Martina Cioffi, “Un guscio rotto da un dolore antico, bianco germoglio”, 2025, legno scolpito, combusto e trattato con olio di lino, ceramica smaltata e lustri. Ph @Eleonora Saviozzi. Courtesy A dimora

The wording “mettere a dimora”, in Italian, means to place a plant permanently in the soil; to allow an organism to lay down roots and then merge with the unpredictable flows of natural life. Thus, the title of the Montagna Fiorentina program evokes both the bond with the ecosystem, with the spirit of the place, and the impermanent character of the five participants’ 2025 works: Martina Cioffi, Gaia Coals, Chiara Gambirasio, Andrea Grasselli, and Samuel Rosi (Muz). A novelty of this edition was the adoption of the open call format, which made it possible to expand the potential for dialogue. The inauguration day opened with a short hike to the Poggio Ratoio Bivouac, one of Londa’s highest points and gateway to the Casentinesi Forests National Park, Monte Falterona and Campigna. Nearby, Chiara Gambirasio’s installation Spaesaggio blends seamlessly with the steep terrain, gradually revealing itself to the passerby. It is a structure that encourages playful interactions: triangles in pastel colors inspired by local flowers invite the first step into one’s personal exploration. Through the crossing of its paths or empty spaces, through movement or stillness, synesthetic changes of condition are experienced. Spaesaggio, thus, equates to a joyful, temporary disorientation to actively embrace new landscapes of experience and new horizons of vision.

Samuele Rosi, “Tempi d’oro”, 2025, ferro, foglia oro, proiettori led 2700K. Ph @Eleonora Saviozzi. Courtesy A dimora

On the banks of the Rincine stream lies Martina Cioffi’s work, Un guscio rotto da un dolore antico, bianco germoglio (A shell broken by an ancient pain, white sprout). The nostalgic yet cathartic soul of the title, in the form of a haiku, reflects both the poetics and the form of the installation: a composition floating on the shimmering surface of a pond. The image recalls the Lake of Idols, with its history of sacredness and exploitation: once an Etruscan ritual site and a body of water considered medicinal for the beneficial substances of the beech tree, it was later emptied indiscriminately to make way for fruitless archaeological excavations. While the petals of charred wood serve as a warning, the blossoming seeds – archetypes of rebirth – in pure white ceramic pay homage to nature’s resilience. Meanwhile, in the heart of the town, Samuel Rosi rekindles the presence of the historic fountain in Piazza Umberto I, adorning its interior with a precious light and a grate in Muz’s typically sinuous shapes. As a perfect backdrop to daily life, an ordinary place dulled by time, the square welcomes an imaginary of the past: Tempi d’oro (Golden Times) is a nostalgic recollection of the color of wheat fields, of which the fountain becomes a portal into the present. The glow thus becomes a source of wonder. It reconnects perception to what has fallen into oblivion and, at the same time, becomes a warm omen for the future.

Gaia Coals, “LOMBRA”, 2025, proiezione a LED temporizzata. Ph @Eleonora Saviozzi. Courtesy A dimora

Gaia Coals elevates the Londa dam to the status of a living monument. Not the lake, but the infrastructure that shaped its birth and made it an identifying place; a historical and communal reference point, now planning center for the future and for a new form of social life. At its masonry base, she installs LOMBRA, a LED projection that appears after sunset. It generates a shadow that is both real and impossible, amplifying the role of the dam as a threshold between the natural and the built landscape. Oriented along the east–west axis, as the Sun sets, the dam casts its natural shadow like an ancient gnomon. Thus, with her work, Coals emphasizes the solid qualities and symbolic consistency of what already exists, manifesting its material and immaterial signs of relation. Finally, Andrea Grasselli’s audiovisual work was projected onto the outer wall of the town’s cinema, transforming it into a liminal surface that evokes the citizens’ long wait and unresolved desire to reclaim that space, closed since 2020. Cinema sospeso (Suspended Cinema) extends into the distant past, recovering archival images and footage from families and local associations to bring forth its cultural legacy. It narrates lost traditions, the synergistic relationship with the forest, dowsing rituals, and folk songs, intertwining ethnographic documentary with the poetics of visual-narrative artifices. As a result of the community’s collaborative disposition, the work restores the fragile, yet inestimable identity value of memory, reminding us of the importance of caring for its testimonies.

Andrea Grasselli, “Cinema sospeso”, 2025, videoinstallazione audiovisiva, 18 minuti. Ph @Eleonora Saviozzi. Courtesy A dimora

Each artwork highlighted significant traces implicit in the territory or silenced over generations, revealing the imaginative and affective potential of the connections between physical elements and symbolic meanings that make a space into a place. Rather than filling relative voids or superficially restoring their sense, processes of rapprochement were cultivated. Those ones capable of transcending the temporariness or permanence of the individual artistic act. Through their personal language, the artists enhanced the dialogue with history, the listening of memories, and the respect for the environment, maintaining the works in an organic relationship with the surrounding collective context. The coexistence of different temporalities and dimensions clothed the works in a gently magical aura that speaks of heritage. A dimora is funded by the PNRR Cultura program with Next Generation EU funds and co-financed by the European project Future DiverCities (Creative Europe Program), which involves eight European cities (including Florence) in experimenting with new cultural uses of abandoned spaces, with strong attention to ecology and to forms of shared management.

Elisa Perissinotti

Info:

www.stareinresidenza.it/a-dimora

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is a contemporary art magazine since 1980