Festival S.Paesa.Menti

The village of Varzi, in the Oltrepò Pavese area, continues its transformation into an open-air contemporary art museum.

From September 26 to 28, the historic village of Varzi will become a widespread artistic stage for art, installations, and performances: three days of events set across streets, natural landscapes, and historic spaces, with the goal of engaging the community and visitors in an experience of “displacement,” a discovery of the familiar that has not yet been recognized.

The project stems from the desire to place at the center the sense of belonging to the historic village of Varzi, while at the same time embracing artistic innovation. It is an invitation to see the town not only as a physical place, but also as a community, as memory and emotion, as a weave between what already exists and what may emerge.

Installations and a “rural fuorisalone” will bring together the city and the Apennines, art and landscape, experimenting with new languages within the town’s historic spaces.

The theme of displacement will guide the 2025 edition, as an invitation to get lost in order to see anew, to recognize, to remember.

Varzi aspires to be a meeting place for art (in its historic cellars, along the Staffora river, and in other heritage sites) and for encounters between locals and visitors.

Through open, participatory initiatives animated by artists able to reach a broad audience, the aim is to bring art and poetry from the streets to the streets. Sculptures, installations, and performances scattered throughout the village will allow real involvement of both residents and guests.

The project is under the artistic direction of Horti and the artistic production of IVAN STUDIO.

The installations will transform the village into an open-air contemporary art museum:

Marco Lastrada – “Displacements”
In a symbolic place of the village, Lastrada will carve words into the urban space. Essential yet powerful, the works will give concrete form to concepts that invite viewers to look beyond habit, opening a passage between the known and the unknown.
KER – “Transparencies on the Bridge”
On the Staffora bridge, KER will install transparent canvases inspired by local myths and landscapes. These light surfaces will create overlays between the visible and the imaginary, turning the bridge into a poetic passage between past and present.
Ninaró – “Abstract Morphologies”
Along the river, Ninaró will create two-dimensional sculptures inspired by the territory. Abstract and symbolic, the works will enter into dialogue with nature, transforming the landscape into an open-air gallery to be seen with new eyes.
Etsom – “The Greenway Mural”
At the Greenway’s arrival point, Etsom will create a live mural, turning art into performance. The work will narrate travel and movement, becoming a welcoming threshold for arrivals and a farewell for departures.
ivan – “Close Your Eyes, Lift Your Gaze”
ivan will create a discreet and profound piece that invites people to slow down, to pause, and to look beyond. The work will blend with language to open a reflective space.
EMI Artes – “Favolarte”
In the public gardens, Favolarte will be born, an interactive installation designed for children yet able to speak to all. Totem sculptures, visual fairy tales, and narrative objects will transform the urban greenery into a place of wonder accessible every day.
Giacomo Nathan Viva – “Restitutions”
Through ceramic sculptures created specifically for Varzi, Nathan Viva will redevelop a key site in the town. These ceramics, symbols of beauty and memory, will activate a process of urban regeneration: a gesture of love and restitution to the community.

During the festival, two interventions will also interact with the landscape and architecture, opening new perspectives on the territory:

ODOL – “Memories at the Tower”
At the castle tower, ODOL will create a site-specific installation blending drawing, neo-muralism, and surreal storytelling. The work intertwines the epic of the landscape with collective memory, creating a suspended time between past and possible futures. A visual gesture for the community, it speaks of tomorrow using the language of history.
AWER – “Otherworld”
For three nights, Varzi will be transformed by AWER’s psychedelic videomapping. Lights, sounds, and hypnotic geometries will animate a corner of the village, evoking dreams and symbols in an immersive experience. A visual journey that pushes beyond the visible, bringing displacement into the realm of dreams.

Two performative actions will further turn the urban space into shared poetry:

IVAN – “The Great White Page”
An enormous canvas (120x6 meters) will come alive in five hours of public painting, involving schools and the community. The white page becomes a symbol of creative displacement: a space to be written together, fertile with dreams and stories.
IVAN – “The Longest Verse in the World”
A 50-minute walking poem: ivan will write a single line along the streets of the village, intertwining memories, words, and visions. A poetic thread across the cobblestones between the two gates of Varzi, inviting a re-reading of the town with new eyes.

Installations and performances will make Varzi an open-air art laboratory, where displacement means embracing the unexpected, inhabiting space poetically, and cultivating new relationships with the territory.

Statements

Mayor of Varzi, Giovanni Palli:
“This Festival aims to be a bridge between past and future. In the village, in its stones, in its traditions, lives the identity that makes us unique. At the same time, we want Varzi to become a place of surprise, encounter, and discovery. With this initiative, we invite the community to look at what is already familiar with new eyes, and we welcome visitors to find here not only memory, but also innovation and beauty. This proposal is part of a cultural growth path that our village has been pursuing in recent years, as shown by the success of the Varzi Festival. Events like this testify to our commitment to enhancing the territory through culture and art.”

Rector of Collegio Borromeo and director of Horti, Alberto Lolli:
“The theme of Displacements aims to encourage deep reflections on the meaning of community. As we are experimenting through the Horti experience, people are searching for new places and moments of community. This kind of disorientation is not about losing one’s way, but about imagining new paths: displacements are tracings of routes, multiple and diverse, to step outside oneself, one’s own world, one’s familiar, in order to recognize oneself in what is other, perhaps unexpected and uncontrolled, new yet not foreign.”

The initiative is part of the NRRP – Mission 1 Component 3 (M1C3), Investment 2.1 “Attractiveness of Villages,” and is funded by the European Union – Next Generation EU.

On the occasion of the event S.Paesa.Menti 2025, VarziViva-ODV invites you to discover the Borgo of Varzi: