Biennale Gherdëina ∞ — SENTIERO

Alex Cecchetti — Walk-Based Project Presented at Biennale Gherdëina ∞
20 May – 25 September 2022
Val Gardena, ITALY

Alex Cecchetti’s walk-based project SENTIERO is presented as part of the Biennale Gherdëina ∞, curated by Lucia Pietroiusti and Filipa Ramos, set against the unique natural landscape of Val Gardena in the Italian Dolomites. The Biennale Gherdëina ∞, which unfolds from 20 May to 25 September 2022, is a multi-site, ecology-driven exhibition platform inviting international artists to reflect on landscapes that are both cultural and geological.

SENTIERO manifests as an immersive walk-piece rooted in the body, environment, and collective experience. Conceived as a land art intervention, a community art project, and a performative walk, the work explores the act of walking itself — both as physical movement and as a poetic, imaginative gesture. The project invites participants to enter the living narratives of the landscape, bridging sensory perception, ecological presence, and the unfolding of place as an experiential terrain.

In SENTIERO, Cecchetti traces a path in the landscape with the support of a group of local guides trained by the artist. These guides play a dual role: they ensure the integrity of the work as it moves through the valley, and they activate its performative dimension through embodied storytelling, choreographed movements inspired by the rhythms of seasons and celestial cycles, recitation, song, and collective engagement with the terrain. Their costumes, printed and embroidered with natural pigments, become part of the ecology of the work itself.

The project situates itself within the Dolomites — a UNESCO World Heritage site — and invites participants to recalibrate their relationship to landscape, time, and ecology through shared presence and embodied reflection. Each step along the path reveals new encounters with vegetation, light, sound, and the elemental materials of the mountains, offering spaces for contemplation, dialogue, and participation.

By presenting SENTIERO within Biennale Gherdëina ∞, Alex Cecchetti expands the discourse of contemporary art beyond the gallery and museum, asserting that art can be a path walked, a narrative lived, and a landscape felt. The project’s inclusion in this edition of the Biennale underscores its commitment to ecological thinking, collaboration, and multi-sensory engagement, situating it as a key moment in Cecchetti’s exploration of how we inhabit and imagine the world around us.