Angelo Leonardo at Vanessa Cardui for the Spring Equinox
On Saturday, March 21, 2026, at 12:00 pm, on the occasion of the spring equinox, Vanessa Cardui presents なんだろう #2 (Nandaro), a work by Angelo Leonardo (Enna, 1991). The presentation marks a new chapter in the dialogue between the artist and the agricultural space, a relationship that began in the summer of 2024 during his first residency at the farm.
The work continues a research process that has unfolded over time. Nandaro enters into conversation with Ogni bosco ha i suoi maiali, the piece created during that residency, and extends the investigation initiated with なんだろう, presented at L’Ascensore in October 2025.
The title comes from the Japanese word なんだろう (nandaro), which can be translated as “I don’t know.” A simple phrase that carries a deeper feeling: the sense of disorientation that emerges when encountering a distant culture, but also the openness required to move through what cannot be immediately understood.
A landscape between memory and transformation
The work takes shape through ink drawings on washi paper that form a folding screen. The images evoke the landscape surrounding Vanessa Cardui, blending reality, memory, and dreamlike elements.
The project also involves the transformation of existing furniture elements within the space. Rather than erasing the identity of the place, the gesture reanimates it, generating unique objects that retain traces of their previous life.
In this process, transformation does not seek perfection. Instead, it embraces error as a possibility—a fertile deviation capable of producing new forms and narratives.
The equinox as a moment of passage
The work is presented on the day of the spring equinox, a moment when light and darkness briefly reach equilibrium. A seasonal threshold that resonates with Leonardo’s practice: a way of working that moves through uncertainty, transformation, and openness to the unexpected.
Angelo Leonardo
Angelo Leonardo’s artistic research can be understood as a continuous embrace of error. In his work he pushes the limits of his technical and intellectual abilities, treating learning as an essential part of the creative process.
He works primarily with painting, embroidery, and video, although his choice of media often shifts depending on the context and the people he collaborates with. For Leonardo, an artwork is never the result of a solitary gesture; it emerges instead from the multiple external influences that shape the process.
Born in Enna in 1991, he currently lives and works in Palermo. He began his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Naples, completing his degree in 2018 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Palermo.
From 2014 to 2024 he collaborated as an author with the magazine E IL TOPO, exhibiting in numerous institutions in Italy and abroad.
In 2015, in Calascibetta, the town where he grew up, he founded Collezione Canalotto, a project developed for Hisn Al-Giran, a non-profit organization dedicated to the protection and enhancement of the Byzantine Village, an ancient rock settlement that bears witness to the passage of Byzantine and Arab cultures in Sicily.
Since 2020, he has been working with Stefania Galegati in an artistic collaboration born from an ongoing research project titled “Where is Everybody?”.