Antonio Polese celebrates Olbia with “Beyond the River”

The San Simplicio Parking opens its doors to the work “Al di là del fiume” by Antonio Polese. The installation by the Olbia artist, born in 1983, is inspired by the cultural heritage of Olbia and will remain available to visitors in the Aspo exhibition space until January 31, 2025 with free admission 24 hours a day.

Inaugurated on Monday, “Beyond the River” creatively reworks Olbia’s archaeological heritage and the famous Punic glass paste necklace, dating back to the 4th - 3rd century BC, found in the Funtana Noa area during excavations in 1937 and saved from the Nazis by archaeologist Doro Levi. Preserved at the Archaeological Museum of Cagliari, the necklace, due to its uniqueness, is often used as an example in history books to tell the story of the Punic civilization .

In the installation, designed specifically for the San Simplicio Parking lot, which overlooks the Roman Necropolis, Polese interprets the cultural heritage and, through the language of illustration and digital drawing, chooses to tell a story by depicting just an instant. The protagonist is a woman who wears the necklace, like a sacred scene, with mythological and fantastic features, set in a characteristic Sardinian landscape made of granite rocks, juniper trees, mouflons and waterfalls, here transformed into a fantastic landscape.

In the absence of frames or captions, the viewer will be invited to give his own interpretation of the composition and to imagine in his mind further frames that reconstruct the before or after of the story mentioned by the artist .