Artist Residency Summer 2025
August 12–17 with Genuardi-Ruta and Angelo Leonardo
From August 12 to 17, 2025, the Vanessa Cardui organic farm, located in Contrada Pozzetti, Collesano, hosted a new artist residency in Sicily, curated by Maria Rosa Sossai and part of the summer program dedicated to fostering dialogue between nature, contemporary art, and community.
Following their earlier experience, the artistic duo Genuardi Ruta and Angelo Leonardo returned to the farm for a week, naturally reconnecting with the place and introducing new practices.
In addition to long pauses in the spring-water pool, shared meals, conversations, and visits from friends, some of us chose to dedicate an hour each morning to meditation beneath the great olive tree. We also all took part in a hand embroidery session led by our friend, embroiderer Maria Mercante from Castelbuono, who shared with us the philosophy behind this ancient art.
An artist residency between nature and community
The residency Pause in Color, or the Oleander revealed how contemporary art can intertwine with rural life practices, creating moments of encounter, well-being, and shared creativity. It was not only an opportunity to produce works, but also a way of living time differently—slower and more consciously.
This experience confirms the role of the Vanessa Cardui artist residency as a space of experimentation and cultural hospitality in the Madonie, attracting artists, artisans, and visitors interested in discovering an alternative way of making art in Sicily—between ecology, tradition, and creative innovation.
On Saturday, July 12, under the shade of the ancient olive tree, we gathered to share the outcomes of Cultivating Photographs—a project born from the encounter between artist and photographer Almudena Romero (Madrid, 1986) and the plants of the estate during her residency from July 2 to 12, 2025.
After closely observing the variety of botanical species present, Romero selected a few leaves and began a silent dialogue with them. Some became part of a small herbarium; others were used to create two works—one with a stephanotis jasmine leaf and another with a black mulberry leaf—onto which she imprinted the negatives of her hands using the process of chlorophyll photosynthesis during sun exposure. These were then preserved in a natural resin.
“I create by relying on sunlight, without chemicals or inks, applying negatives directly onto leaves that I either expose to sunlight or print onto live plants using a digital projector,” the artist explained.
A deep connoisseur of 19th-century photographic processes, including those involving plants such as photosynthesis and photoperiodism, Almudena Romero produces ephemeral images that in some cases gain longevity through the immersion of leaves in plant-based resin. Her artistic practice offers a critical rethinking of photography, cultivating living images through biological means and using only plant pigments produced via photosynthesis and sunlight.
This project challenges the use of chemicals and traditional cameras, proposing a radical reflection on sustainability and visual ecology in the Anthropocene era. Her creations are not mere visual representations, but performative, autonomous entities whose material transformations question conventional ideas of authorship, permanence, and photographic representation. She proposes a non-extractive, biological approach to photography—deeply rooted in contemporary ecological thinking.
Her image-objects and photographic experiences expand our understanding of both photographic art and the natural world, while redefining photography itself as an ongoing dialogue between art, science, and nature.
The fragile nature of her works introduces a vision of photography as a performative process—serving self-expression and critical reflection, allowing for a broader understanding of the medium. Her image-objects and photographic experiments stretch the boundaries of what photography can be, inviting us into a more profound relationship with the living world.
As part of the residency, on Thursday, July 10 at 6:00 PM, the artist engaged in a public conversation with Maria Rosa Sossai and the community of Castelbuono, held in the cloister of the Minà Palumbo Natural History Museum in Castelbuono.
Genuardi-Ruta and Angelo Leonardo
for Azienda Agricola Vanessa Cardui, Collesano (PA)
August 12–17, 2025
Maria Mercante:
Meditation and Embroidery as a Daily Practice
“Embroidery is an ancient and delicate gesture that carries with it calm and serenity.
The slow rhythm of the needle passing through the fabric becomes precious time, made of breath and lightness.
In the open countryside, surrounded by the sounds of nature and the silence that embraces, each stitch transforms into harmony, bringing beauty to the work and inner peace to the one who creates it.”