The project created by Virginia Russolo was inspired by a little-known carnival tradition in Sedilo that has nonetheless survived in its entirety, “Sa cursa de su puddu” (The rooster race). This annual event, which originated as an apotropaic ritual, involved the village people galloping on horseback, grasping and decapitating chickens that were hanging head-down from a rope stretched between two houses. Today the rite is performed using animals that are no longer alive, and even though it has lost its ritual value, it retains its visual immediacy and its symbolic violence. The sacrificial element is deeply rooted in the Sardinian carnival tradition: the word itself, “Carrasecare,” means to tear flesh and refers exclusively to the flesh of a living animal, linking these rituals to the cult of Dionysus, the god who was dismembered before achieving rebirth. The sound of cowbells, which in many cultures is associated with protective power, is omnipresent during these rituals and, for the artist, becomes the ideal combination of sight and sound, expressing the tension between death and rebirth.
In the project titled Campanacci del solstizio (Cowbells of the solstice), Virginia Russolo specifically addresses the inhabitants’ collective memory: bell-shaped metal sculptures with bone clappers are suspended from a cable hanging above one of the village streets. Made by reinterpreting traditional techniques, the cowbells transcend conventional boundaries and explore a new language rooted in collective cultural history. By combining organic materials such as beeswax, animal fats, flowers, bones and leather, Russolo deconstructs and reassembles the image of folklore, breathing new life into it. The classifications of human, animal and spiritual are blended together; biological and artificial elements merge to assume both structural and metaphorical roles. The bells amplify the light of day, even though theyare activated by the bones of animals which have completed their life cycle, and evoking themes of death and rebirth. Through this work, the artist extracts ancestral stories and folklore, to shape new mythologies oriented towards the future

ㅤ

Artwork:
01. Virginia Russolo, Campanacci del solstizio (Sos sonazos de primu istíu), 2024. Beeswax, animal fats, iron, brass, leather, flowers, Hypericum oil, bones from horses struck by lightning, 100 x 500 cm circa.
Via Efisio Marini, 17, Sedilo

ㅤ

Artist video:

Virginia Russolo, Manto, video HD, color, suond, 4’40’’

Text and narration: Anika Pettini. Video footage and editing: Gianluca Flore.

Watch the video here

Virginia Russolo (Oderzo, Italy, 1995) lives and works in Crete, Greece, having grown up in Italy, the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands. She graduated from the Ruskin School of Art at the University of Oxford in 2017. Her research explores how communication with the sacred is mediated through materials such as beeswax, silk, propolis, animal fats, and horns, which frequently appear in her paintings and sculptures. She investigates what anthropologist Tim Ingold terms a ‘correspondence’ with materials, treating them as forms of intelligence. Her work is influenced by elements of mysticism, mythology, and a subtle sense of archaeological nostalgia. Russolo was selected for the artist residency at Fondazione Spinola Banna in collaboration with GAM, Turin (IT, 2019) and Rupert’s Alternative Education Programme, Vilnius (LT, 2021). In 2023, she was a Visiting Art Scholar at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. She has participated in exhibitions at: Shahin Zarinbal, Berlin (DE, 2024); CLC Gallery, Beijing (CN, 2023); The Address Gallery, Brescia (IT, 2022); Mediterranea 19 Young Artist Biennal, San Marino (IT, 2021); Rupert, Vilnius (LT, 2021); Podium Gallery, Oslo (NO, 2021); Procida Capital of Culture, Procida (IT, 2022); 7th Thessaloniki Biennal, Thessaloniki (EL, 2020); T293 Gallery, Rome (IT, 2018); Pitt Rivers Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, Oxford (UK, 2017); and Modern Art Oxford (UK, 2016).