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Alessandro Di Giampietro
Butterfly Etude

A group of people was invited to the entrance of an abandoned mine. Everyone flew their kites, and the sky in front of the iron tower of the mine was filled with colors: for a brief moment, a lost place was revived. The action was then captured in a photograph.

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Cleo Fariselli
Gigante Montagna

Coming from ancient folk tales, the Giant Mountain created during the workshops with the children was installed on holidays in the central square of the town. Inside, you could take refuge, play, write, and draw, like in a magical, forgotten time.

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Marco Colombaioni
Maschere, autovolanti e macchine del tempo

During the Luna Park Party workshops, children created a fantastic world from the material they gathered, creating self-flying cars, roller coasters, colorful masks, water parks, and a time machine that was then made available to all during the days of the party.

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Derek MF Di Fabio
Strumenti rumorosissimi

Reconstructing sounds that were lost who-knows-where; imagining a noisy burst of sounds from found objects used as instruments; trumpeting on a symphony of jars.
During the workshop, the children of Perdaxius assembled materials they collected from the families, hypothesizing new uses for them and experimenting with new sounds. On the last day of the celebration, the whole town could hear their noisy parade through the the center of town.

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Giovanni Giaretta
Cinema Perdaxius

With simple elements, such as shaving mirrors and small neon lights, rudimentary projectors have been built, a minimalist cinema. During the workshop with the children of Perdaxius, portraits of the aliens of the country were drawn, a parade of presences that are not there. On the days of the festival the silhouettes were projected in the library, which for three days became Perdaxius’s cinema.

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Leonardo Chiappini
Origami

Small and large ducks, seals, colorful breeds, populate the square and the crevices of an ancient mud house in Perdaxius. Made during the workshop, the origami were arranged by the children all around their village.

Diego, second grade, has imagined and designed a time machine. The machine was built together with Marco Colombaioni and became an attraction of the the feast day of Saint James for many years

In 2014, the statue of Perdaxius’ patron saint, Santu Jacu (St James), was accidentally shattered during the yearly procession dedicated to him, when it got caught in a festival ribbon hanging over the street. The fall of the saint upset the community, who viewed it as a sign of future misfortunes. 

The following May, while in Nairobi for the Darajart residency project, Cherimus decided to reinvent a new statue for Perdaxius with Nairobi-based artist Charles Nshimiyimana.

Once back in Sardinia, the sculpture was completed with the aid of the people of Perdaxius during Caro Giacomo 2015. The eyes of the saint are made of coal extracted from the mines of Serbariu in Carbonia, while his walking stick is made of wild olive wood.

Once finished, the statue was donated to the town of Perdaxius. The town, however, was reluctant to welcome it because of its Masai-like features and its unconventional clothes, which seemed to them more suited to a pilgrim than to a saint. Eventually, though, people started to pray in front of the saint.

In 2016, the statue was thus used for the first time for the festival of the patron saint’s yearly procession.
During the 2016 festival of Caro Giacomo, Cherimus hosted Brera’s collective OUT 44 (Giorgio Cellini, Chiara Peru, Camilla Garelli), and visual artists Marco Pezzotta, Simone Berti, e Vanina Lappa. During the days of the festival we collaborated with Perdaxius-based association Su Nuraghe to design a new kind of pastry with the shape of a scallop shell (the symbol of St. James and of pilgrimages) to be offered to the inhabitants. From Dina Marongiu and the other members of the Su Nuraghe association, artists learned a traditional way to shape bread for special occasions (su coccoi) and an old way to bake it; they then designed breads with unexpected shapes, some of them resembling, in miniature, the saint’s new statue.

On the main evening of the festival, traditional poet and inventor Francesco Capuzzi sang a poem he wrote about the story of the new saint’s statue. The new poem was performed at Bar Trullu in the center of the town.

After the festival, the sculpture of the saint was placed in the old countryside church of St James, where inhabitants now often go to visit it.

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They have found ancient documents about the birth of Perdaxius


They have found ancient documents. Due a flag placed too low…


The old saint broke into pieces due to a flag placed too low


Before the Roman age, here lived the Carthaginians


Before the Roman age, the new Saint was born far away, from a Rwandese father, in the land of Kenia


He spent his youth in the lake of Tiberias


Someone who saw him said he does not quite look like the old one


The must ferments bubbling in every tub


St James was born in Palestine, so tell me who is the right one?



(Francesco Capuzzi)

Pilota

Walking through the new public parks of Iglesias, Musei, Domusnovas and Villamassargia, you’ll now meet monstrous and glittering fountains, cities-antennas of insects suspended on trees, stone maps from which you can let your gaze fly, playing fields with irregular borders and rules all to be invented, adventurous paths among strawberry trees, myrtles, pear and carob trees…
In this photo gallery you’ll see a selection of the works already installed in the new parks made during the project “I giardini possibili”

After the series of workshops held by Dragos Olea (Apparatus 22), Yassine Balbzioui, Dexi Tian and Amy Sow, some of the children’s drawings and ideas were developed and to be transformed into viable public space installation for the 4 new parks of the project, trying to preserve as much as possible the original vibe of the initial idea.
Cherimus in collaboration with the Barega association began to install the first artifacts in January 2021.
This gallery shows some of the backstage of the work, focusing on the creation and installation of the “fountains” for the park of Domusnovas.

During the first edition of Caro Giacomo, in 2008, artist Marco Colombaioni, co-founder of Cherimus, decided to display a painting on a wall in a small square of the town, in the spirit of that first edition that invited the artists to propose and install artworks outdoors or in public spaces of Perdaxius. 

At that time, Marco Colombaioni had already taken a series of trips to Nairobi where he had worked and collaborated with artists based there, and was intensively studying Kanga textiles, popular items produced and used in Kenya and Tanzania. Each Kanga has a specific meaning, containing a message, a proverb, or an aphorism.

This painting has the structure of a Kanga, with a large decorative frame and, in the center, a scene with two birds and a hibiscus flower. One bird is flying away, and the other is approaching the flower. In Swahili, the phrase on the painting says: dreams guide us, but we must act. The painting was exhibited for the three days of the town feast. On one of these nights, the painting was vandalized, necessitating a restoration of the piece.

Later, Colombaioni collaborated on a project with sociologist Judith Raymond Mushi, who started the first university course on Swahili language and culture in Milan. The project focused on fighting homophobia through the production of new special Kangas with new messages. Together, Colombaioni and Mushi organized a Kanga Kokomanga Party in January 2011 to raise funds to support the project. They also worked together on a design for a new Kanga with a quote by Pasolini: “L’innocenza è una colpa,” which translates to “Innocence is a fault.”
This fruitful collaboration ended suddenly when Marco Colombaioni passed away in July 2011.

At the end of July of that year, for the Festival of Saint James, Cherimus organized a celebration in honor of Marco in the small square where the painting had been shown a few years before. A 1:1 scale reproduction on paper of his work “Dreams guide us, but we must act” was installed on the same wall where the painting once hung. That evening, visual artist Emiliana Sabiu presented, for the second time, “Twenty Cakes.” In this piece, 20 real cakes and pies made by the community of Perdaxius were displayed on a table with an elegant tablecloth. Artist Samba “Bathie” Tounkara curated the music for the celebration and provided touba coffee to the attendees.

In 2014, for the annual festival of Caro Giacomo, Cherimus decided to make a permanent mosaic version of the painting on that same wall. The mosaic was made using tile samples offered by various retailers in collaboration with visual artists Gemma Noris, Josè Chaves, Scarlett Lingwood, Hamdy Reda, Andrea Rossi, and Carlo Spiga.

Deggo Yëggo emerged from the encounter between some of the most interesting and innovative artists in Sardinian and Senegalese music, who, starting from their own musical heritage, have developed a research project based on contemporary practice. The group came to life in Dakar, in 2019, thanks to the international cooperation project music@work, subsidized by Regione Autonoma della Sardegna and organized by the Cherimus association together with the University of Sassari, The Nivola Museum of Orani, Sardegna Teatro, and the municipalities of Perdaxius and Carbonia, in collaboration with the Senegalese Dakar-based association Kër Thiossane, Villa pour l’art et le multimédia.

The photo gallery summarizes some of the most significant moments of the encounter of the musicians in Dakar after months of remote collaboration, including their rehearsals, their first public concert in the Kër Thiossane headquarters, and the recording of the songs created or reinvented on the occasion of this meeting in Pape Konatè’s studio. All pictures are by Umberto Santoro.

September 7th, Elmas

September 8th, Monte Gonare

September 12th, Teatro Massimo, Cagliari

September 14th, Perdaxius

September 16th, Semestene

September 17th, Conservatorio, Cagliari

“Do a good deed and throw in the sea.”

In one of her letters to Fawwaz Traboulsi, published in Of Cities and Women, Lebanese artist and poet Etel Adnan wrote that if it weren’t for the sea, Beirut would not have survived devastation. “But there is salt on the ground, in our mouths, on our clothes, in our hands; something that resists putrefaction,” she told him.

In Arabic, there is a saying that goes: “Do a good deed and throw in the sea.” The sea here is a metaphor for what we leave behind us in order to move on. It speaks of our capacity to let go and to transform. Throw in the sea is about releasing what stands in our way, what we no longer need, what is not in flow. It is an invitation to be like the sea: always in motion, ever changing, and yet perpetually harmonious.

For this project, this saying was the harbor from where we set out to sail. The sea became a space of transmutation and imagination; as well as a space that transcends differences and brings together diverse communities that are geographically, historically and culturally connected to the Mediterranean. This unifying mass of water carries the dreams and myths of those who live next to it, stroll by it, jump in it, are captured by it, write and sing about it… The project is an attempt to decode and record these narratives. By doing so, it aims to create a space for the collective unconscious to be heard and for alternative histories to be revealed.

The project consists of two parts in dialogue with each other. One part will take place in Sardinia, the other in Lebanon.

In Sardinia, the project will move across the Sulcis, reaching out to different communities from the region and inviting them to participate to multidisciplinary workshops and activities.

As the project moves from one place to another, it becomes a record of the unheard: of voices that have been stung by revelation; of voices that are in constant search of the sea within and outside of them. It is a record of our collective imagination and one that ultimately finds its way back to the sea.

In parallel to the activity in Sardinia, Ibrahim will collect soundscapes and conduct short interviews with different groups of people who live close to or have a specific relationship with the sea in Lebanon.

The idea is to create a weaving of the sounds from both sides, Lebanon and Sardinia, to tell the story of journeying towards the sea collectively and individually, what happens along the way, and how we will in the end, irrespective of our different paths, all meet at the sea.

Project commissioned by TBA21-Academy as part of The Current III: “Mediterraneans: ’Thus waves come in pairs’ (after Etel Adnan)”, curated by Barbara Casavecchia