"Because the landscape is a living organism with tactile capacities: it touches the uncovered nerves of the soul and makes them vibrate—if you allow it. And because it is not just a beautiful view, but a spiderweb in which the thinking and doing of generations remains entwined."— Prof. Mattia Pacilli, a resident of Bassiano (LT) for Una Boccata d’Arte 2024

Dove non sono mai stato, là sono (Where I Have Never Been, There I Am) is a narrative of the first five years of Una Boccata d’Arte, a widespread contemporary art project born in 2020 from an idea by Marina Nissim and realized by Fondazione Elpis. The mechanism is simple: each year, twenty artists spend a residency period in twenty villages and towns with fewer than five thousand inhabitants and off the main tourist routes—one for each Italian region—connecting with the local context and creating an artistic response, which may be temporary or permanent. After the first edition, which emerged almost spontaneously as a reaction to the sudden halt of cultural initiatives due to the pandemic, Una Boccata d’Arte has continued to explore and evolve its vision and approach. Over five editions, the initiative has resulted in one hundred completed projects—one hundred artists and one hundred towns since its inception (they will become one hundred and twenty by the time this exhibition ends).
At the heart of this vast mosaic lies the desire to foster encounters between people and places, and to create new and unexpected opportunities for dialogue and mutual enrichment between artists and local communities, acting in contexts often removed from the usual dynamics of the art world. Introducing an external artistic perspective into a small village is not a guaranteed success, and many variables can determine whether a project is well received, poorly received, or simply ignored. A common thread among projects that have been embraced by communities is the artist’s ability to listen, perceive signals, and build genuine connections. This can be achieved in various ways: informally through local gathering spots—bars, trattorias, shops, post offices, hairdressers, churches, pharmacies, schools, and social clubs—or through more targeted efforts to engage with artisans, professionals, historians, geologists, teachers, and local officials, or through historical, anthropological, or socio-economic research.
The projects have tackled a broad range of themes over the past five years: the lack of basic infrastructure, geographic and cultural isolation, the depopulation of inland areas, the aging of the population, the survival of traditional knowledge, languages, crafts, the erosion of social spaces, the redefinition of community identity, the recent phenomenon of touristification or “borgo-mania” (as described by Antonio De Rossi in his collection Contro i borghi [Against the borghi]), and the changes—natural or human-induced—affecting the territory and the environment.
The places selected within the regions and provinces vary greatly and reflect the incredible richness of the Italian landscape: seaside or lakeside villages, mountain towns, fortified medieval settlements, and remote hamlets with only a few dozen residents.
Such complexity would be unmanageable without a widespread network ensuring a strong territorial presence. This is where the regional curators come in—key figures whose primary role is to “prepare the ground” and facilitate relationships between artists, local residents, and administrations, building a solid foundation for the artistic project to grow organically and avoid being perceived as imposed from above. Deeply rooted in their territories, regional curators manage the project locally and act as bridges between the artists and the community. Thanks to their work, almost half of the completed projects have left a permanent mark in the towns they touched—through donations by the artists or acquisitions by municipalities —forming a parallel, year-round artistic itinerary alongside the annual edition.
With this background, how can something that happens simultaneously in twenty different places across Italy be told within a single exhibition space? How can one begin to convey—even in part—such a vast and complex web of stories, encounters, and relationships?

Without the utopian ambition of being exhaustive, Dove non sono mai stato, là sono brings together a multitude of traces, fragments, and testimonials generated throughout the five editions. The exhibition moves across different times and places, activating a process of excavation and reconstruction akin to archaeology.