RESIDENCIES
BACK TO THE LAND
BACK TO THE LAND is an artist residency programme curated by Eleonora Angiolini and Davide Tuseddu, produced by The Nomadic Art Institute in collaboration with the Pinacoteca Contemporanea and Ethno’s Festival Arti Visive, with the patronage of the Municipality of Martis and the Municipality of Laerru, and with the support of Fondazione di Sardegna.
The programme aims to offer artists born in Sardinia and trained outside the island the opportunity to spend a period of research and production in the studio spaces located in the centre of Martis (SS). The spacious studios are designed to accommodate the conception and production of works on site, foster the exchange of knowledge and skills, encourage dialogue between artistic practices and support the professional development of participants.
At regular intervals, the residency spaces open to the public through open studio events, providing opportunities to share and present the work developed during the artists’ stay. The programme is complemented by meetings, talks and activities that encourage dialogue and exchange with the local territory and community.
With the aim of supporting the creative industries ecosystem both within and beyond the island, BACK TO THE LAND provides accessible workspaces for visual artists and cultural professionals. Through dialogue between artists and communities, the project seeks to generate new opportunities for growth, employment, and social and cultural wellbeing.
BACK TO THE LAND aims to host a diverse network of visual artists, curators and cultural organisations, promoting contemporary artistic practices and recognising their capacity to foster relationships, knowledge and transformation within the territory.
ANDREA FALCHI
Andrea Falchi (Sassari, 1995) is a visual artist from Martis.
After studying at the Accademia di Brera in Milan, his painting practice has explored memory, tradition and contemporary visual languages, with a particular focus on symbols of local culture and the collective imagination, weaving together intimate experience and shared heritage. He has participated in various exhibition projects in Italy and abroad, presenting both paintings and illustration works.
In 2025, his artistic practice was the subject of the solo exhibition Respiri sommersi at Spazio SSC94 in Milan.
SELENE CARDIA
Selene Cardia (Silius, Cagliari, 1995) lives and works between Silius (Cagliari) and Naples.
After nine years of training in Berlin, Florence and Naples, in 2023 she decided to return to Sardinia, to her hometown.
Raised in a rural area of the island’s interior, Cardia comes from a family of shepherds spanning several generations. This heritage is an integral part of her personal and artistic identity. Since 2023, her artistic practice and her work on her father’s goat farm have mutually informed one another, generating an ongoing dialogue between painting and everyday life.
For Cardia, painting is a way of engaging with things, an action pursued consistently, in which the repetition of gestures—from preparing the supports to applying colour—involves an appropriation of time according to a specific rhythm and sensibility. In her practice, time and gesture coexist in a relationship of mutual influence, shaped by waiting, reconsideration and gestation. These processes sometimes emerge through layers of colour, while at other times they resolve into rapid, congested brushstrokes.
The natural element is predominant, constantly evoked but never made explicit. Her painting stands at the opposite end of representation, instead placing careful research into colour and pictorial matter at its centre. Through this research, she explores the interpenetration of two opposing elements: unease and joy and play. To evoke rather than define, remaining on a threshold of uncertainty, allows Cardia to keep open a space for doubt—one that she understands as positive, an act of resistance to the general rigidification of life, as well as an act of care and attention towards the multiplicity of things.
Selene Cardia is currently represented by Galleria Alfonso Artiaco.
Cardia holds a Bachelor’s degree in Painting from the Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze and a Master’s degree in Painting from the Accademia di Belle Arti di Napoli. Her most recent exhibitions include the solo exhibitions Chiodi d’Ambra, Galleria Alfonso Artiaco (Naples, 2025), and Dedicato a Miguilim, Galleria Doris Ghetta (Ortisei, 2025), as well as the group exhibition Lettere intorno a un giardino, curated by Marta Ferrara and Mario Francesco Simeone, Galleria Alfonso Artiaco (Naples, 2024).