Luca Locatelli. The Circle

The Circular Economy is defined by the European Union as “a production and consumption model that involves sharing, lending, reusing, repairing, reconditioning and recycling existing materials and products for as long as possible”. Fifty years after its theorisation, Circularity is now one of the most promising and ambitious strategies for creating an environmentally, productively and industrially sustainable future. Words like recirculation, reuse and recycling have started to increasingly populate assessments and analyses of long-term policies and our potential for wealth, identifying over time the key points of the problem, such as how to manage the exhaustion of primary resources, the illusion of exponential growth or the management of waste.

The Circle is a photographic project narrating the revolution of possible solutions. Following a very long research project, Luca Locatelli has documented the good practices, experiments, ambitions and paths of this new utopia. His ten-year commitment to the subject is condensed in the stories commissioned by Gallerie d'Italia of Intesa Sanpaolo, presented for the first time in a unitary context in this exhibition.

Visitors are taken on a European journey of experimentation and sustainable industrial advancement, touching on themes such as geothermal energy, the recycling of textiles, the repurposing of abandoned industrial areas, and food. The stories portray real experiences of Nature Based Solutions, actions undertaken to protect, sustain and restore natural ecosystems, which, when applied to industrial and production models, have the potential to trigger the Cultural Transformation needed to change the course of things. Accompanied by a substantial set of infographics and explanatory texts, the images tell of experiences and realities in which the finest engineering, craftsmanship and ancestral wisdom go hand in hand to create a space where Nature can be a central issue again, and where man’s knowledge and wisdom can be at the service of environmental forces in order to benefit from their power, without attempting to tame and imprison them: those Nature-Based Solutions which, more than any other, offer us the greatest chance of success. They show us how the most futuristic technology and the intuition of self-production can both contribute to the same goal - the closing of the circle, the possibility of a perpetual system.
The possibility of success.

The exhibition, curated by Elisa Medde, will open to the public at Gallerie d'Italia - Turin from 21 September 2023 and will be accompanied by a catalogue published by Gallerie d'Italia / Skira.
A rich series of appointments will be presented during the exhibition, for the traditional Wednesday #INSIDE public programme, with talks and meetings related to the topic of the Circular Economy

Under the Patronage of