May 25–August 30, 2026
Italy
Artists: John Sanborn, Ionee Waterhouse. Sound Design: Andrea Ludovic. A project curated by Laura Barreca.
Heaven+Earth is a site-specific installation born from the intersection of the Sicilian baroque, artificial intelligence, contemporary artistic interpretation and the Castelbuono community. The work emerges from the fusion of a series of 3D and photometric scans: first of the Serpotta workshop’s extraordinary seventeenth-century stuccoes (1684–1687) in Ventimiglia Castle’s Palatine Chapel, then of the faces of 35 Castelbuono residents, integrating the community directly into the work’s DNA.
Through AI reprocessing, the artists have created an immersive installation in which technology does not serve as a mere image-generating tool but as a “strange collaborator” integrated into the creative process. The result is a multisensory eight-channel video environment in which architecture and shifting surfaces come to life, animated by an endless array of images that join Castelbuono residents’ features with bizarre baroque creatures, merged through an imaginative metamorphic process. In Ventimiglia Castle tower, a monumental twin-faced 3D-printed sculpture—combining scanned human faces and Serpotta stuccoes—embodies a union between two worlds, between two eras and between art and humanity.
The soundscape, composed by Andrea Ludovic, guides visitors through a journey from the earthly to the celestial, giving tangible form to the conflict between our human fragility and our desire for eternity.
Heaven+Earth is an experimental project that explores contemporary art’s potential for engaging with Sicilian historical and artistic heritage. A unique work that now joins the Museo Civico di Castelbuonocontemporary art collection, testifying to a collective dialogue between past and present.
This project has been made possible by the support of the PAC2025 Plan for Contemporary Art open call, launched by the Italian Ministry of Culture’s Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity. It has been realised under the patronage of the University of Palermo and the Alma Mater Studiorum University of Bologna, in collaboration with MEET Digital Culture Center, Milan, and Ypsigrock Festival.
The exhibition has been assisted by a prestigious advisory committee comprising Sebastiano Bavetta, Alessandra Buccheri, Valentino Catricalà, Antonio Chella, Sandra Lischi, Filippo Lubrano, Sebastiano Maffettone, Diego Mantoan, Silvia Moretti, Maria Grazia Mattei, Francesco Spampinato, Pier Francesco Palazzotto, Valentina Valentini.
