A blooming wall at the entrance to the city

The City of Turin, in collaboration with 24 ORE Cultura and Unipol Group, has donated a new open-air work of art to the city. A ‘botanical’ mural welcomes visitors to the city’s historic center in the name of nature and its healing power. DOA OA, a multidisciplinary artist originally from Galicia who uses walls to create real scenes of botanical illustrations scattered throughout the space, was called to create the work, entitled Althaea officinalis L.

For more than two decades, Turin has been promoting the enhancement of urban territories through public art; with 5,000 square meters of painted wall surface, the city has witnessed the evolution of street art, developing a specific language and cultural figure in constant dialogue with the international scene. Within this context is the urban enhancement intervention desired by the City of Turin in the territory of District 1, in Via Fratelli Calandra, a street that can be considered a “gateway” to the city center. A high and narrow wall has been transformed into an 80-square-meter canvas, an anti-monumental entrance that uses the beauty and delicacy of flowers as a welcoming language.

The work is part of the larger project Reforesting, initiated by the Galician artist in 2014 with the intention of reviving forgotten urban spaces through pictorial representations of native plant species. The goal is to bring the viewer closer to the knowledge of medicinal plants and the plant kingdom, stimulating greater awareness of the importance of respecting the ecosystem. In this context, the work Althaea officinalis L. is inspired by an ornamental plant found in Piedmont, also known for its soothing properties. Its name comes from the Greek word “althain,” which means to cure, to heal: an invitation to care for the land we are fortunate enough to inhabit, but also a way of reaffirming the power of art to enhance abandoned spaces.

A participatory urban art project

DOA OA’s mural is the latest piece in an urban art project that we have been pursuing for some time in the conviction that art should go beyond the confines of museum spaces and invade the streets, helping to strengthen the collaboration between institutions, companies and the community. A link in which private enterprise can also find its role, both in terms of patronage and with a concrete contribution to the choices of the city’s cultural policies, as evidenced by the collaboration with Gruppo Unipol, a partner in this project from the beginning. The work was carried out together with a local nonprofit, Fondazione Contrada Torino onlus, which was entrusted with the management of the construction site.