Memories and future, signs and seeds. In Sassari, every Saturday along Viale delle Rimembranze, the creative and collective work of drawing on the panels marking the border with the long-awaited intermodal center, currently only present as a rendering, continues. Children and artists, teachers and students, all volunteers, are building a thin, permeable wall that redeems the decay of the previous fences, plagued by vulgar graffiti. Now the painting reveals messages to be experienced through vision, such as the quotation from Matisse's "Dance" and "Dance Around the World," a decoupage inspired by Gianni Rodari, created by Giampaolo Pinna, Giuseppe Mura, and Dino Gagliardi. There's the drawing of the female athlete leaping over barbed wire, painted by Marco Mattei, and the landscape of red poppies inspired by Fabrizio De André's song, painted on the panel by Roberto, a Sassari native, an education worker and artist of school murals. The initiative has many partners, from the historic center committee to the San Donato school at the university, to the Senegalese communities, with "High Five," chaired by Mor Sow, and the Chinese community, which, along with Qiu Zhongbiao, a bar owner, donated the paint.
The children, all Montessori-trained, paint slogans, candlesticks, references to Sassari's symbols, or themselves in front of the view. "They preferred to use a day of leisure," says one of their teachers, "to come here." They are Miriam, Roberto, Giorgia, Alice, Mirko, Davide, Gabriele, and many others, 11-13 year-olds from the school on Via Satta who "want to create something beautiful." Thirty Senegalese children, some tiny, are participating with paintbrushes in the work under the guidance of numerous tutors, in a shared experience that, it is hoped, will lead to an inter-ethnic future. It is a commitment that is involving dozens of people to transform Sassari, and its historic center, from one associated with degradation, bringing to life through art the message that unites each work: peace, equality, and integration.
