In Biella, where a former wool factory has become one of Europe’s most inspiring laboratories of social art, 2025 marks a new chapter in the journey of Cittadellarte. This year, the 27th edition of the multidimensional event Arte al Centro expands the dialogue between art and society to include the realm of sports—a vital core of Michelangelo Pistoletto’s thought.

At the Palazzo del Buongoverno, amid a series of exhibitions reflecting on the role of art in building a more just and sustainable future, you can find the new show ‘Unity of Sports for Preventive Peace’. Conceived by Pistoletto himself, the exhibition is a visual and conceptual meditation on the immense potential of sport as a training ground for coexistence—a space of shared rules and common ground where conflict can be understood and managed.

Far from a fleeting theme, this line of inquiry has long been present in the prolific body of work and expansive vision of one of Italy’s most renowned and socially engaged artists. We spoke with Paolo Naldini, Director of Cittadellarte about this concrete metaphor, where sport becomes a form of governance, of education, and of acceptance of the world.

Let’s start from a particularly meaningful phrase that feels like a manifesto: the role of art in building a more just and sustainable future. How does the element of sport fit into this process? And what role does it play within the Arte al Centro project?

Paolo Naldini: “Answering this question means opening up interconnected worlds. First, I want to say that I love working with words, and one Italian expression always strikes me for its richness: mettersi in gioco—literally, ‘to put yourself into play’. It captures the duality between play and seriousness, between lightness and commitment.

Sport, as an evolved form of play, perfectly embodies this duality. Playing ‘seriously’ is necessary today, because every sport—like every game—begins with a foundational element: the definition of rules. No game exists without rules. It’s within this framework that we move from the lightness of play to the responsibility of construction. Defining rules is, in essence, a uniquely human trait—it’s how we create worlds, imagine realities, and then bring them into being.

In this sense, the first ‘parliament’ is the neighborhood court. It’s where people talk, negotiate, and draw the lines of a playing field that becomes a microcosm—with its inside and outside, its licit and illicit, its ethics and aesthetics of interaction. That’s where education in coexistence begins—learning to cooperate and to manage conflict without destruction. It’s about building a shared space—a world—within which we play, compete, and grow.

And within that space, another precious word emerges: competition. From the Latin cum-petere, it means ‘to strive together toward something’. An opponent in sport is someone you want to beat, but not destroy. If you destroy them, the game ends. If you deny their existence, you erase the very context that allows expression. So sport is an implicit alternative to war—a virtuous sublimation of it. It’s a symbolic place where tension remains, but violence is disarmed. At its core, sport is an act of peace.

Public squares where nothing is played, where people no longer engage or take risks, speak of a sleeping demos. On the other hand, squares where games happen, where children, markets, music, sports, and diverse communities alternate—those are alive. And they are, in the noblest sense, democratic squares. They are spaces of appropriation—not in the sense of possession, but of use. In those spaces, a dynamic commons is created, shared in turns, generating plural identities and openness.”

Modern and contemporary art have long been inspired by the muse of sport. Pistoletto is one of the most brilliant—and deeply reflective—examples of this. What can you tell us about this connection between seemingly distant worlds? And can you share with us something about the relationship between Pistoletto and the sports imagery?

PN: “Michelangelo has always loved skiing. It’s a sport that requires letting go, trusting your body and movement… And as he often says, it demands both control and surrender. Football is a recurring theme in his art—one of the subjects Pistoletto has explored most deeply. For example, he created one of his most iconic performances by rolling a large ball made of newspapers through the streets. A ball that engages and pulls people in, evoking collective, spontaneous, almost childlike participation. A simple yet powerful gesture. Because the ball is a universal symbol: its shape recalls completeness, harmony—but also instability, motion, possibility… chaos. It’s an object to be shared, passed from hand to hand, one that compels interaction.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that many metaphors in contemporary art originate in sports objects. For Pistoletto, the sphere represents that very ambivalence. It’s a symbol of chance, of randomness—like a roulette wheel. And yet, we try to control it—with our feet, our hands, our whole body. And that attempt is what captivates us, what draws us into a near-meditative state. Michelangelo often talks about how this artwork sparked an unexpected wave of participation. That sphere has returned in countless performances over time—one of the latest was between Gorizia and Nova Gorica, straddling the border during the European Capital of Culture celebrations. It became a symbol of crossing, of unity, of shared movement.

More broadly, I believe that both art and sport are practices that train our capacity to feel. If you don’t practice art—or sport—you lose a part of your potential. Because the first step toward art is feeling: without feeling, there is no emotion; and without emotion, there is no creation, no transformation. A society that doesn’t feel is anesthetized. A society that does feel is alive. It expresses itself, communicates, brings its emotions into the public space, triggering a political process in the highest sense of the term. Think about what happens when emotions truly enter the polis: politics—if it’s worthy of the name—can once again represent what society feels. Not as the output of an algorithm, but as the echo of a collective vibration.

That’s why we say democracy needs both art and sport—because it needs passion, play, and shared practice. And sport, like art, is a form of meditation: immersion in the present. Historically speaking, this is evident. In the ancient East, meditation developed as a form of withdrawal, of transcendence… In the West, with the Olympics, a form of active, kinetic meditation emerged. Running, swimming, wrestling—these are all ways of connecting with body and spirit. Because breath is spirit, spiritus, spirituality…”

How do these reflections come together in the sport-focused space within Arte al Centro, namely Unity of Sports for Preventive Peace?

PN: “Peace can’t be seen merely as the absence of war—it must be understood as a practice, a skill, a kind of training. It’s not something achieved by signing a treaty—it’s a playing field to be protected every day. A fragile ecosystem that must be tended. In this sense, a culture of preventive peace is urgent. If we don’t practice it, if we don’t train for it, we’ll find ourselves unprepared in the face of conflict. And then, the risk is a rapid descent into violence.

That’s why sport, art, school, and play are all forms of war prevention. They are spaces where we learn to be together in our differences, to cooperate, to compete without destroying one another. That’s why anything that trains us for relationship—including sport—is already, in and of itself, art at the center of responsible social transformation.”

To explore the exhibitions and spaces of Fondazione Pistoletto Cittadellarte—including Unity of Sports for Preventive Peace—visit its website (https://cittadellarte.it/en).