events program
thuersday 16-23-30 aprile ore 18.00
OPENING April 16, 2026, 6:00 PM
Exhibition opening in the presence of artists Ilaria Turini, Eugenia Querci, Anna Nunzi,
Gart President Katia Paoletti, and Letizia Brancato, manager of the Naturasì Orto Bistrot space.
Poetry reading by Davide Cortese; meeting with dancer, writer, teacher, and Zen nun Annamaria Gyoetsu Epifanìa; readings from her book "The Way of Clear Eyes. The Art of Manifesting Yourself Without Noise," with musical accompaniment by Simona Sanzò on the Japanese Shakuhachi flute.
he will perform the following pieces:
- Chikuma Saji (dedicated to bamboo)
- Sakura Sakura (on cherry blossoms)
- Gekko Roteki (dedicated to the moon)
- Kojo no Tsuki (on death and rebirth)
The duration varies from 2 to 3 and a half minutes.
A conversation with Vania Melani and Maria Paola Gargiulo about and from the "Bosco magico," Gart's operational headquarters in Cascina (Pisa) and the "Sentiero del Respiro" project.
Davide Cortese
Davide Cortese, born in 1974, is a poet, writer, and artist from the island of Lipari. His works include "Zebù bambino," a poem about the devil's childhood (Terra d'ulivi Edizioni), the collection of poems "Darkana" (LietoColle), and the novels "Tattoo Motel" (Lepisma) and "Malizia Christi" (Edizioni Croce). Translated into numerous languages, Cortese has received the "Don Luigi Di Liegro International Poetry Prize" at the Campidoglio and the "La Chute Poetry Prize" in Florence.
Annamaria Gyoetsu Epifanìa
Annamaria Gyoetsu Epifanìa presents an exceptionally rich and multifaceted profile. She combines a high-level artistic background with a deep dedication to the practice and teaching of Soto Zen. She recounts a successful career as a professional classical dancer, graduating from the National Academy of Dance in Rome and a soloist in major companies and theaters, alongside icons such as Carla Fracci and Rudolf Nureyev. This experience is complemented by skills as a dance therapist and Tai Chi Qi Gong teacher. Her spiritual journey, which began in 1985 with figures such as Thich Nhat Hanh and Corrado Pensa, led her to dedicate herself completely to Sōtō Zen, receiving monastic ordination in 1999. Co-founder and resident teacher at the Anshin Zen Center, Annamaria Gyoetsu leads seminars integrating Zen and dance in Italy and abroad, and is the author of two books published by Lindau: "If You Breathe, You're Dancing. The Art of Surrendering to Movement" (2020) and "The Way of Clear Eyes. The Art of Manifesting Without Noise" (2024).
Simona Sanzò
Simona Sanzò is a student of Maestro Fiore Sei Chiku De Mattia (Sainte-École, Paris), who specializes in the interpretation of Honkyoku (sacred pieces for shakuhachi from the Japanese Buddhist tradition). She has attended advanced courses with Maestro Marco Lienhard and Maestro Teruo Furuya. In 2020, she obtained the Shakuhachi Teacher License from the "Hijirikai" school in Tokyo. She is a member, with Maurizio Mihata Castè (Koto Daishihan), of the DUO MIDARE, specializing in classical Japanese instrumental repertoire.
"Magical Forest", Gart operational headquarters, Cascina (Pisa)
Vania Melani
Vania Melani was born in Pisa and spent her childhood in the Cascina countryside, immersed in the rhythms of the land her grandfather devotedly cultivated, amid rows of vineyards and fields fragrant with the changing seasons. That deep connection with the rural landscape became the root of her sensibility. After studying art, she moved to Florence, where she dedicated herself to designing spaces and interior furnishings, honing her keen eye for the balance between functionality, material, and atmosphere. Years later, the call of her roots brought her back to the house where she grew up. There, she oversaw the restoration and renovation of the family farmhouse, transforming it into a welcoming bed and breakfast. At the same time, she also passionately devoted herself to producing ceramics. Later, she purchased the land that once belonged to her grandfather from her aunt: a green area that now surrounds and embraces the B&B, becoming an integral part of it. From this gesture, a landscape regeneration project was born, involving new plantings, soil conservation, and a long-term vision. The goal is to grow, year after year, a vibrant and generous forest, allowing nature—and those who live in it—to rediscover a healthy, prosperous, and ever-evolving environment.
Maria Paola Gargiulo
Maria Paola Gargiulo is a group official. She has worked in Parliament (both in the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate) since 1998. She has long been involved in agriculture and European affairs. She currently serves as Chief of Staff for Senator for Life Liliana Segre. An expert in institutional communications, she is registered on the regional (Sardinia) list of trainers. She has worked for years on literary parks. She is co-author of the Book of the Islands (published by Kronos Group).
Thursday April 23, 2026, 6:00 PM
Poetry reading from the book of poems "Dentro" by and with the author,
poet Laura Anfuso.
Readings by actress Elisabetta Pagnani.
Verses written specifically for the event and exhibition "Terrasìa, Breathing Earth. Reminder of the Invisible" curated by the GART-GardenArt app at Orto Bistrot - Naturasì.
The earth is vast
it feels and sounds
it breathes the bodies
it moves the senses
it scatters the seeds
it rises the trees
it opens the sky
the light believes life calls
it discovers the essence
it hat the soul protrudes
Laura Anfuso
Laura Anfuso
Laura Anfuso explores the fullness of the word that emerges through synthesis and subtraction. The poetic word is the nest of an authentic feeling that preserves a multiplicity of sensitive levels and textures and enjoys a singular light even in the original space of the artist's book. In fact, there are numerous artistic collaborations, including those with Alfonso Filieri (Edizioni Orolontano), with Luciano Ragozzino (Edizioni Il ragazzo innocuo: Orthoptera and Raggio), with Lucio Passerini (Edizioni Il Buon Tempo: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Acrostici by Laura Anfuso), with Daniele Catalli ((DFRG PRESS: Di Ferite Stelle - Daniele Catalli, "Di Ferite Stelle" - The MCBA Prize). He has also collaborated with the Atelier InSigna (Gianna Bentivenga - Maria Pina Bentivenga), Marcella Basso, Brunella Baldi, Laura Bertazzoni, Valeria Brancaforte, Vito Capone, Loretta Cappanera, Luisella Carretta, Mei Chen Tseng, Alessia Consiglio, Eleonora Cumer, Andrea Delluomo, Elisabetta Diamanti, Felice Feltracco, Salvatore Giunta, Silvana Leonardi, the MagnificheEditrici, Lia Malfermoni, Roberto Mannino, Claudia Melotti, Yurika Nakaema, John David O’Brien, Daniela Piga, Lydia Predominato, Paola Sapori, Lucia Sforza, Stefano Turrini. His poetry collection, "Anima," was published with a note by Stefano Iori in the "quindici per quindici" series by Edizioni Terra d'ulivi. "Dentro" (La Vita Felice, "Agape" series, July 2025) features an afterword by Diego Ferrante.
Elisabetta Pagnani
Elisabetta Pagnani has worked with various theater companies since 1983, with experience both in Italy and abroad. A member and advisor of Gart, she creates theatrical animation for children and adolescents; street theater; school performances; and youth theater. Since 2015, she has collaborated with the "Ti con Zero" association on projects encouraging reading through dramatized storytelling. She builds Kamishibai and miniature paper theaters for readings and dramatized storytelling. In 2004, together with dancer and teacher Tiziana Franzò, she founded the ETRA association for the creation of educational projects in Dance Theater.
"Dentro"
The poems collected in "Dentro" resemble a breathing exercise, an alternation of inhalation and exhalation that marks the life of the body and its openness to the world. The writing traces an interior landscape that expands and contracts, inhabiting its voids with tenderness. Anfuso restores a more complex meaning to white. It is a white that sews, alleviates, soothes, connecting with silence in a more introspective gaze: "calm the skin/ eyes breathe/ white the scent/ that life is born" or "silence calls/ body sounds with meaning/ fulfills life." In his verses, silence is not an escape from the word, but a way to give it time and form, like snow that covers without erasing, allowing the pain or the landscape to resurface in a renewed light. It is a silence that takes on a particular value when confronted with the horror of war, a presence that runs, directly or indirectly, through the entire collection. For Anfuso, memory is not an archive of past events, but a presence rooted in gestures, breaths, and everything the body carries within itself but cannot express. This connection between the body—the reader's—and the poetic word is accentuated by the choice to exclude punctuation. The absence of marks creates a space of hesitation, where the voice stumbles before responding to the natural rhythm of the verse. from the afterword by Diego Ferrante
EXTRAORDINARY EVENT
Friday April 24, 2026, 12:00 PM - 6:00 PM
"Terrasìa, Breathing Earth. Reminder of the Invisible" is part of the PEACE Day exhibition organized by RAW-RomeArtWeek.
During the day, visitors can not only visit the exhibition curated by Gart but also discover the wonderful initiative that has allowed people to adopt a Peace Tree, or Hibakujumoku, second- and third-generation trees that survived the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
Gart-GardenArt Aps, together with the Anshin Zen Center, has adopted a Ginko, Hibakujumoku, planted in the Japanese garden of the temple on Via Ettore Rolli. The gardens will be open to visitors by appointment starting this spring.
Guided tour of the garden by Gart, including an introduction to Breathing, led by the Center's Zen teacher and nun, writer, and dancer Annamaria Gyoetsu Epifania. You will also discover the "Breathing Trail," created by Gart with RomaNatura, FederParchi, RomaTre, and Urban Re-Tree in 2023 in the Monte Mario nature reserve. This permanent and replicable trail is open to the public.
Thursday April 30, 2026, 6:00 PM
Final event of the exhibition "Terrasìa, Breathing Earth. Reminder of the Invisible" with the participation of artists Ilaria Turini, Eugenia Querci, Anna Nunzi, Gart President Katia Paoletti, and Naturasì space manager Letizia Brancato.
During the evening, the quarterly magazine "GartMagazine," registered with the Rome press court, will be presented by the director Renato Reggiani and Katia Paoletti; and the research project "Salvaticus," following the trail of wild men and women from the Middle Ages to the present, will be introduced.
Katia Paoletti
Katia Paoletti stands out for her career path that integrates publishing and academic culture, contemporary art, ecological sensitivity, and a relationship with nature. Her work with Gart aims to forge connections between artistic creativity and environmental and spiritual awareness. The social promotion association, founded and chaired by Katia, develops initiatives that unite art, nature, and the interior dimension. Katia occupies a unique position in the contemporary Italian context. Thanks to her editorial background, she brings a rigorous curatorial approach, enhancing writing and theoretical reflection in artistic projects. Her work aligns with contemporary art movements that prioritize shared experience, the relationship between people and the environment, and a participatory dimension. She is among the figures in Italy promoting an art that is attentive to the environment, linked to inner growth, and far removed from purely commercial logic. While not a mainstream figure, she is relevant in independent, experimental circles linked to artistic and cultural research.
Renato Reggiani
Renato Reggiani chronicles the future with a journalist's perspective and a consultant's precision. From Rome to Asia, from real estate to the new frontiers of sustainability, he works at the intersection of Artificial Intelligence, ESG strategies, and industrial innovation. His activities range from strategic communications to internationalization, with a fundamental interest in the technologies reshaping the world: bioenergy, intelligent systems, the ecological transition, and the space economy. Through research, projects, and outreach, he builds bridges between what is complex today and what will be inevitable tomorrow.
"GartMagazine"
A quarterly publication launched in 2020, it focuses on the "planetary garden" as a relationship between living beings, between the Microcosm and the Macrocosm. Art, with its many experimental forms, becomes a tool for exploring the ancestral bond with nature, with the wild. A bond that, despite everything, has never been broken. Rooting evokes depth, but also growth, like the majestic patriarchs of the forests that populate the legends of the ancients. Participants included educators, poets, writers, artists, philosophers, art critics and collectors, cultural practitioners, and artisans.