This is a journey that begins at the end, where absence begins. You are now in the green room, the square in the cavity of an imaginary depot, where you see the evidence of an imperceptible storm: on the suggestions offered by the work of artist Edoardo Piermattei, forms of cement and pigment, hypotheses for the reconstruction of erased images, voids that become full, absences that become presences. Sign upon sign, afternoon after afternoon, during the Prima Idea workshops, in the brightest room of the Child Neuropsychiatry and Paediatric Oncohaematology Ward of the Regina Margherita Children’s Hospital in Turin.

You are part of a promise that believes in the invisible grace energy of a possible cure. From those stained glass windows, the hill is the land of the desire for freedom that reveals itself in the face of lack. What you see is a single, complex organism, a prototypical creature in which many limbs are one body and each becomes unique and irreplaceable. Creatures that have emerged slowly, from sunken worlds, unseen universes buried beneath a resistant stratification of defeats. Although absent, we illuminate the gold to make the whole body shine within a manifest aptitude for falling in love. These signs are horizons, wings of creatures that have flown so far, claw marks of colour on postcards travelled to the address of Progetti Specifici in via Santa Giulia 32 bis. On the wall the precious fragment of a detached fresco, Landscape without figures, donated by their restless souls. An ampoule holds every smallest fragment of this journey, a sediment of their gestures, a further trace of the emptiness witnessing their absence. In silence, listen to the wandering frequencies of their silent sighs. Make room within yourself for this tale: never seen, never heard, never told.

Bringing contemporary art into dialogue with places of care and everyday life. To offer young people the opportunity to explore the artist’s work from the moment the creative spark is ignited, and then to understand and retrace his design practice.

It is with these intentions that in 2021, thanks to the collaboration between DEAR onlus and Oggetti Specifici, Prima Idea was born, a project that is part of the Robo&Bobo workshop education programme targeting pre-adolescent and adolescent patients (11-18 years old) of the Paediatric Oncohaematology and Child Neuropsychiatry wards of the Regina Margherita Children’s Hospital in Turin.

Prima Idea was realised thanks to the contribution of Compagnia di Sanpaolo and Andrea Ruben Levi; technical sponsor Galliano Divani & Tendaggi.