Image: Museo d'arte contemporanea del castello di Rivoli, Rivoli
The Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea is marking the opening of a new public art project by Maria Thereza Alves in Canelli, in Italy’s Langhe-Roero and Monferrato wine landscape. Pluriversal Recapturings (Riconquiste pluriversali), 2026, will be inaugurated at La Moncalvina on 11 July, with opening remarks, a performance by EgriBiancoDanza and drinks, before becoming open to the public from 12 July.
The project is presented by the Municipality of Canelli, Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea and the Associazione per i Paesaggi Vitivinicoli di Langhe-Roero e Monferrato. According to the museum, it has been realised with the support of the Fondo Unico Nazionale per il Turismo, established by the Italian Ministry of Tourism, and the Regione Piemonte, with curatorial coordination by Castello di Rivoli. The institution says the initiative also places Canelli among the “Capitali Sorelle” of Alba Capitale dell’Arte Contemporanea 2027.
The work has been conceived specifically for La Moncalvina, and the museum frames it as an encounter between Alves’s practice and a landscape recognised by UNESCO as an outstanding example of the interaction between human activity and the natural environment. Castello di Rivoli says the project celebrates the tenth anniversary of the UNESCO designation of the Paesaggi Vitivinicoli di Langhe-Roero e Monferrato, and describes the site as one of Europe’s most significant cultural landscapes.
Alves, who has worked internationally since the 1980s, is identified by the museum as a major figure in contemporary art’s engagement with political ecology, memory and the relationship between human beings and the environment. The project builds on research she undertook in collaboration with professionals, university scholars and local communities in the area, focusing on the long-standing relationships between territory, flora, fauna and agricultural practices. Rather than presenting landscape as a fixed image, the work proposes it as a dynamic system shaped by historical, cultural and ecological stratifications.
Pluriversal Recapturings is described as a site-specific intervention made up of a wall structure partly built from bricks and partly from pietra da cantoni, punctuated by different stones and designed to answer the habitat and microclimatic needs of several local animal and plant species. The work is also part of a wider ecological landscape design developed with ecoLogicStudio, which includes native plantings arranged in a concentric circular geometry intended to foster biodiversity and interspecies relationships. The garden is conceived as an open system that will evolve over time in response to the site’s conditions.
The museum’s presentation places the project within a larger set of public-cultural objectives. It argues that the UNESCO heritage landscape should be understood not only as something to preserve, but as a living organism and shared space in continuous transformation. In that sense, the project speaks to one of the art world’s key current concerns: how contemporary artists are rethinking heritage, ecology and public space together, and how artistic commissions can become instruments for local research as well as wider environmental reflection.
Maria Thereza Alves (São Paulo, 1961) is also noted by the museum for her long-running multidisciplinary practice linking art, activism, territorial research and community engagement. Her exhibitions and biennial appearances, listed on the museum page, underline the international context in which the Canelli project arrives. As a permanent work in public space, Pluriversal Recapturings adds a new artistic marker to the UNESCO landscape while extending Castello di Rivoli’s role in shaping contemporary art projects beyond the museum walls.
