In the village, people say that in the past, the most frequently-heard sound in the centre’s narrow streets was the slow clopping of mule hooves. Long days, weeks and months of travel were needed to transport life from one city to another, exchanging valuable merchandise on the intricate paths of the salt routes, constructing what has now become the cultural heritage of the Four Provinces.
La Camminata dei Corpi Salienti (The Walk of Significant Bodies) by artist Beatrice Celli retraces some of the important locations on these ancient Ways, highlighting the interconnections between different cultures and populations, generating a new territorial geography.
Within the densely-built structure of San Sebastiano Curone, Celli has placed three glass lamps with disturbing anatomical features, eccentric alchemical alembics that – activated on the day of inauguration and filled with salt crystals – shed light onto ancient stories, trade relations and fleeting visits that traversed the area and have reached us today in a rarefied form, sparsely distributed along the streets like a legend.
For the inauguration, the residents are invited to take part in a walk led by two mules with jute sacks filled with salt. This substance, with its alchemical properties and the delicate biochemical balance that it creates in our bodies, purifies distant times from the most obscure forms of energy, and puts the past into communication with the village’s present. The notes of pipes and whistles, that accompanied muleteers during their journeys, echo along the familiar routes.
Even the tools for manual labour, typical of these lands, preserved in the Piero Leddi archive, freed from the weight of their original function and inebriated by a new vitality in contact with bodies, are transformed into jewels to be worn, re-establishing a primordial link. In La Camminata dei Corpi Salienti, the artist thus creates a collective testimony, a spell cast on the locations that, re-enchanted, reveal the never-ending existence of combinations and analogies between the elements, giving rise to new tales and new paths.
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Artworks:
01. Beatrice Celli, Musetta, 2024. Borosilicate glass, salt crystals, 45 x 35 x 15 cm.
Via Giuseppe Garibaldi (porch)
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02. Beatrice Celli, Janua, 2024. Borosilicate glass, salt crystals, 60 x 20 x 15.
Via Piacentina (fountain)
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03. Beatrice Celli, Armonio, 2024. Borosilicate glass, salt crystals, 45 x 35 x 10 cm.
Via Malacalza (window on the street)
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04. Beatrice Celli, Vestigia Vaganti, 2024. Wood, glass, wire, hemp laces, variable dimensions.
Casa del Principe, Piazza Solferino
Visits only by appointment, please call 335 5694943 (referente)
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The project is an invented tradition, a slow procession that transforms the legacy of salt routes into a collective enchantment, a song of reconciliation between living bodies and landscape, illuminating new paths of harmony and protecting trading places from negative energies.
Beatrice Celli, La Camminata dei Corpi Salienti, San Sebastiano Curone (AL), Piemonte. Ph Agnese Bedini
Beatrice Celli, La Camminata dei Corpi Salienti, San Sebastiano Curone (AL), Piemonte. Ph Agnese Bedini
Beatrice Celli, La Camminata dei Corpi Salienti, San Sebastiano Curone (AL), Piemonte. Ph Agnese Bedini
Beatrice Celli, La Camminata dei Corpi Salienti, San Sebastiano Curone (AL), Piemonte. Ph Agnese Bedini
Beatrice Celli, La Camminata dei Corpi Salienti, San Sebastiano Curone (AL), Piemonte. Ph Agnese Bedini
Beatrice Celli, La Camminata dei Corpi Salienti, San Sebastiano Curone (AL), Piemonte. Ph Agnese Bedini
Beatrice Celli, La Camminata dei Corpi Salienti, San Sebastiano Curone (AL), Piemonte. Ph Agnese Bedini
Beatrice Celli, La Camminata dei Corpi Salienti, San Sebastiano Curone (AL), Piemonte. Ph Agnese Bedini
Beatrice Celli, La Camminata dei Corpi Salienti, San Sebastiano Curone (AL), Piemonte. Ph Agnese Bedini
Beatrice Celli, La Camminata dei Corpi Salienti, San Sebastiano Curone (AL), Piemonte. Ph Agnese Bedini
Beatrice Celli, La Camminata dei Corpi Salienti, San Sebastiano Curone (AL), Piemonte. Ph Agnese Bedini
Beatrice Celli (L’Aquila, Italy, 1992) works between Castelli, Italy, and Marseille, France. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome and Urbino, spent a period at Villa Arson in Nice, and in 2019 was selected for the École Offshore post-university program in Shanghai. She has participated in numerous residencies, including Thankyouforcoming at Kaunas Artists’ House, Kaunas (LT, 2021); Miramar, Procida (IT, 2022); In-ruins at the Archaeological Park of Sibari (IT, 2023); and received a grant from the French ADAGP Society to advance her research on witchcraft in Italian villages. Among her solo exhibitions, we mention Le jardin des allégories at Villa Arson, Nice (FR, 2021). Her work has been exhibited at: Fondazione Elpis, Milan (IT, 2024); MACTE, Termoli (IT, 2024); MACRO, Rome (IT, 2023); Transpalette Contemporary Art Center, Bourges (FR, 2023); MEMENTO, Auch (FR, 2023).
Exploring the bridges that link craft, folklore, and the wonder, my practice manifests itself in an eclectic body of sculptures, performances, texts, and installations alternating between impulsivity and recuperation, care and ritual. These beliefs, transmitted by the women of my family in Abruzzo, open a breach to other worlds normally inaccessible and materialize as contemporary objects of worship freed from all religious dogmatism.
San Sebastiano Curone has a population of 547 and is located on the old “Via del Sale” (Salt Road) between the Ligurian Sea and the Po Valley. The historic centre, with its alleys and squares, retains an ancient and evocative charm that reflects its history, traditionally linked to crafts and trading activities.
In fact, the village has picturesque streets expertly paved with old stream cobblestones and lined with houses several storeys in height, some of which are embellished by 17th-century carved stone portals. These portals bear witness to San Sebastiano's flourishing past, confirmed by the village's distinctive features. In fact it has no rural constructions, but just buildings for residential houses and shops.
A castle, a small chapel dedicated to San Sebastiano, a customs building at Cascina Cabella and the presence of refreshment posts on the road from Piacenza to Genoa, led to the development, between the 15th and 16th centuries, of a village that was part of Gremiasco in the Imperial Feud of Fabbrica Curone, ruled initially by the Fieschi family before later passing to the Doria family.
San Sebastiano Curone was the birthplace of two important artists. In fact it now houses the Archives dedicated to Felice Giani, a neoclassical painter who worked at the most prestigious courts, and Piero Leddi, a leading exponent of Italian modern art.