Stones Into Bread renews the Museum’s focus on highland regions, often shaped by extraction processes and depopulation. This perspective is grounded in the work of anthropologist Vito Teti. Far from suggesting immobility, his concept of “restanza” (staying) is reimagined as a conscious choice to inhabit places marked by historical fractures or marginality. It is an invitation to remain with the problem – a refusal to seek comfort in easy solutions.

The exhibition weaves together works from the Mart Collections, site-specific interventions, public art, and off-site activities, unfolding as a constellation of “villages”, clusters of partial memories and silent architectures organised around fields of intensity. Latencies, where remnants and apparent absences emerge; Frictions, marked by incomplete archives, conflicts, and unresolved histories; Drifts, shaped by migrations and territorial discontinuity; and Reactivations, where performative practices connect traces to visitors’ presence.

Within these liminal spaces, the exhibition opens a threshold of inquiry. Even what seems inert – a stone, an abandoned place – may conceal something organic, something quietly alive and rising. What bread does each stone hold within?

In collaboration with the Municipality of Trento, the exhibition benefits from the support of leading scientific partners: the Trento Film Festival, Fondazione Stava 1985, the Franco Demarchi Foundation and STEP – School for Territorial and Landscape Governance, Fondazione Stava 1985. The project is complemented by a catalogue bringing together a series of critical essays, including a text by Vito Teti himself.

 

All the artists featured in the exhibition
Carla Accardi, Giorgio Andreotta Calò, Giovanni Anselmo, Mirella Bentivoglio, Antonio Biasiucci, Marina Caneve, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Camilla de Maffei, giulia deval, Regina José Galindo, Shilpa Gupta, Ruud Janssen, Zhanna Kadyrova, YoungEun Kim, Maria Lai, Eunhee Lee, Richard Long, Matteo Lucca, Piero Manzoni, Ana Mendieta, Marzia Migliora, Francis Offman, OHT | Office for a Human Theatre, Sarker Protick, Mario Schifano, Santiago Sierra, Giovanna Silva, Mladen Stilinović, Natália Trejbalová, Andra Ursuța, Alice Visentin.

Opening
Thursday 16 July 2026, 7.00 pm
Free entry to the Galleria Civica di Trento from 7.00 pm to 10.00 pm.