Author: DAAR - Decolonizing Architecture Art Residency

Entity of Decolonization: Ashes – at Borgo EX, Carlentini (SR) Sicily 2025 – Photo: Fabian Kanopka

On the occasion of the exhibition The Museum of Opacities at the Museum of Civilizations in Rome, DAAR presents a new installation titled Ashes, part of the long-term project Entity of Decolonization, awarded the Golden Lion at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia (2023).

The Entity of Decolonization emerged as an open-ended process for all those who feel the need to engage with or question the legacy of Europe’s colonial and fascist history. Since 2020, through research, artistic interventions, educational programs, and public discussions at the former Entity of Colonization of the Sicilian Latifundium in Carlentini (Province of Syracuse), the project has involved universities, cultural institutions, and local associations in a process of critical reuse of Borgo Rizza, renamed Borgo EX. Built in 1940 under Fascism to “colonize” the Sicilian countryside—deemed backward and unproductive—Borgo EX raises a central question today: how can we reuse buildings constructed during colonial and fascist regimes without perpetuating the ideologies embedded in their architecture?

Following a series of public gatherings with the local community in Carlentini, in 2021 DAAR created an installation to extend this conversation to other contexts and audiences engaged with reuse of Difficult Heritage and decolonization. Starting from the deconstruction and reassembly of the facade of the Entity building, DAAR developed a structure composed of modular seating units, conceived as a platform for collective discourse. This installation has since been exhibited and activated in multiple cities and institutions—including the Mostra d’Oltremare and Museo Madre in Naples, the Berlin Biennale (2022), La Loge in Brussels, the public square in Albissola Marina, MUCIV–Museum of Civilizations in Rome, and the Venice Biennale (2023)—inviting the public to reconsider the social, political, and cultural implications of difficult heritage and to imagine new possible uses for this Difficult Heritage.

Following this extensive journey—during which the ghosts of Borgo EX became entangled with other colonial and modernist legacies—a replica of the installation was ceremonially burned in Carlentini as part of a cathartic and liberating ritual. The ashes were collected into 18 urns, intended to “fertilize” 18 future projects.

Entity of Decolonization: Ashes – at Borgo EX, Carlentini (SR) Sicily 2025 – Video still Valentina Manzoni

Entity of Decolonization: Ashes – at Borgo EX, Carlentini (SR) Sicily 2025 – Photo: Fabian Kanopka

In this context, the installation Entity of Decolonization: Ashes is now presented at the MUCIV–Museum of Civilizations as the culminating intervention of DAAR’s Research Fellowship. This new iteration incorporates and reconfigures two display cases from the former Colonial Museum, which had originally been used to exhibit objects expropriated during Italy’s colonial occupations. Transformed by DAAR, these vitrines become a device for storytelling: from a bed of ashes emerges a video documenting the ritual destruction and transformation of the colonial entity into a space for decolonial imagination.

From the ashes also arises a new initiative: the launch, in collaboration with MUCIV, of the Prize for the Critical Reuse of Difficult Heritage. Italy retains an extensive architectural and historical legacy from its colonial period (1882–1960), which remains largely unaddressed. The Prize for the Critical Reuse of Difficult Heritage aims to recognize individuals, collectives, and institutions that have initiated processes of critical engagement and imaginative reuse of this legacy.

The inaugural prize is awarded to the Municipality of Carlentini, in recognition of its support for the reuse of Borgo EX. Since 2020, the municipality has generously made the site available to local and international actors for new and diverse uses. The award celebrates how the Municipality of Carlentini has undertaken a process of transformation that—without erasing the site’s colonial origins—reorients its meaning and use toward new and critical narratives.

With this initiative, DAAR and MUCIV launch a biennial award to honor those who imagine and implement critical and transformative reuses of architecture, public space, and built heritage—in Italy and abroad—so that new, shared possibilities can emerge from the material and symbolic legacies of the past.

Muciv – Museum of Civilizations
Museo delle Opacità #2
Opening: Wednesday 21st May, h 18 – 21

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Entity of Decolonization: Ashes, 2025
DAAR – Alessandro Petti and Sandi Hilal

Images and Photography: Valentina Manzoni
Editing: Federico Allocca
Color: Gabriele Cipolla
Technical Installation design: Herman Hjorth Berge

Entity of Decolonization at Borgo EX, Carlentini (SR) Sicily 2025 – Photo: Herman Hjorth Berge

In the past year, student encampments have re-emerged as powerful sites of protest against Israel’s regime of colonization, occupation, and apartheid in Palestine, as well as the complicit silence of Western universities and governments that provide support for Israel’s war crimes and genocide in Gaza. Moreover, student encampments have been an extraordinary laboratory for commoning practices and student-led critical pedagogies. This course will provide a space to critically reflect on the historical events of the past year, examining their impact on higher education, academic freedom, and critical thinking.

However, more than an archival study of encampments, we will strategically shift our focus and attention to the decades-long ongoing struggles in Palestinian refugee camps. Palestinian camps have been spaces of resistance against Israel’s negation of the ongoing Palestinian Nakba. Emerging at the end of the 1940s as humanitarian spaces, over the following decades they became sites of political urbanity in exile, where new social and political structures were created outside the state system. Despite their differences, refugee camps and student encampments are temporary spaces where the world is reassembled in new configurations. Although both emerge from moments of crisis and are often dominated by an expiration date, they reveal the power of people coming together in the struggle for justice and equality.

The course welcomes participants eager to critically and collaboratively explore the spatial, social, and political dimensions of various forms of encampments. The program will be structured as a combination of online sessions and three in-person gatherings, fall, winter and spring.

APPLY HERE

DAAS – DECOLONIZING ARCHITECTURE ART STUDIES, in Sharjah is an advanced research educational programme led by DAAR – Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti, open to artists, architects, curators, and cultural producers interested in situating and understanding their practice within a broader theoretical, historical, political, and social context. The programme is radically structured around participants’ practices and interests offering a critical space for reflection on questions emerging from practices rooted in context. It serves as a space for convivial collective learning. The programme aims to create fertile ground for cultivating a new field of artistic research in Sharjah by forming a group of practitioner fellows who seek to belong to a community of thinkers open to collective reflection and collaborative thinking. The region, home to many practitioners from the Global South, is rich with unique stories that this program seeks to make space for and intertwine with artistic practices. By merging theory and practice, participants will contribute to building a multitude of narratives that recognize and resonate with one another, embodying the diverse cultural depth of life and work, and connecting stories across different lands, belongings, and experiences. DAAS in Sharjah is a combined effort between Sharjah Architecture Triennial, Sharjah Art Foundation, and the Africa Institute, Global Studies University, Sharjah. Advisory members include Hoor Al Qasimi, Salah M. Hassan, Walter Mignolo, May Al-Dabbagh, Shahram Khosravi, Zoe Butt and Charles Esche.

How to Apply

In the midst of the Gaza genocide, our search for belonging and support led us to Cairo, where we met a group of Palestinians artists and architects that survived the genocide in Gaza. A powerful termed emerged during our initial conversations, the profound concept of “Ezwa.” This term intricately weaves together notions of belonging, resilience, and relationships, offering a comprehensive framework for navigating the complexities of communal support. Ezwa encapsulates the essence of being part of a group wherein mutual support is not merely a response to hardship but an integral aspect of everyday life. Within this framework, individuals find solace and strength in one another, sharing burdens in times of adversity and celebrating together in moments of accomplishment. It transcends the conventional boundaries of family, tribe, or nation, emphasizing instead the power of friendship and trust as the building blocks of a resilient community. The emergence of communities like Ezwa highlights the innate human desire for connection and support, especially during times of crisis. By fostering spaces where individuals can come together, share their experiences, and offer each other unwavering support, Ezwa exemplifies the resilience of the human spirit and the power of community in overcoming adversity.

Moreover, the Ezwa community evolves and transforms itself organically as members invite others through friendship and trust, each bringing their unique experiences and perspectives to strengthen the collective bond. In the face of intellectual isolation, the significance of Ezwa becomes even more pronounced. It serves as a beacon of hope, providing individuals with a sense of belonging and connection that is vital for maintaining self-esteem and pride, even amidst extreme difficulty. Through Ezwa, individuals find affirmation in their shared experiences and solidarity in their collective struggles, reinforcing the belief that they are not alone in their journey.

The tree school in Cairo is supported by the Foundation for Arts Initiatives.

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DAAR, Burning the facade of the former entity of colonization of Sicilian latifundium in Borgo Rizza, Sicily. Photo: Rehaf Batniji

One of our goals at Borgo Rizza is to de-normalize its fascist architecture; to critically reflect on the very fact that this architecture was not demolished. Today, most of it is actually in need of restoration. And it’s almost 100 years old, so technically, it’s about to officially become Italian heritage. The trick that architectural historians have used to evade problematizing this difficult heritage has been to separate its formal aspects from its political, social, and environmental motivations. With our interventions at Borgo Rizza, we’re attempting to reconnect this architecture to the historical moment when it was produced, but also to reintroduce it into the present. At a time in which migrant populations continue to arrive in Sicily from former colonies (Libya, Eritrea, and Ethiopia), it is necessary to ask, who has the right to use this colonial–fascist architecture?

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In support of the student movement for the liberation of Palestine and the reclamation of spaces for critical conversations and actions on university campuses, DAAR will visit the encampment at the Politecnico di Milano for an open discussion on the role of education in the struggle for justice and equality. This event will take place at 10:00 AM at the Leonardo Campus.

As part of Milano Arch Week 2024, DAAR will present a lecture on “Decolonizing Architecture” at the Milano Triennale at 6:00 PM.

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ENTITY OF DECOLONIZATION
THIRD ANNUAL GATHERING
Borgo Rizza, Carlentini (SR), Sicily
May 6–10, 2024

Following on from the previous two editions of the Difficult Heritage Summer School  in May 2024 the annual gathering will encompass a week-long intensive program consisting of collective learning, interventions, and performances, rooted in the three core branches of the Entity of Decolonization: 

1. Pedagogy
2. Art and Architecture 
3. Commoning

This year the hosting institutions are the Municipality of Carlentini, the DAAS program at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm, the School of Architecture at the Royal College of Art (RCA) in London, IASPIS (the Swedish Arts Grants Committee’s International Programme for Visual and Applied Arts), DAAR (Decolonizing Architecture Art Research), and Museo delle Civiltà in Rome. 

• PEDAGOGY

The Difficult Heritage Summer School III: Under Repair is jointly organized by DAAS, the School of Architecture at the RCA and IASPIS. Taking place in Borgo Rizza, the event questions and mobilizes the notion of repair around the possible reuse of buildings, monuments and environments affected by modern/colonial violence and exclusion. To do so, the School invites participants to discuss new approaches in architecture, design and preservation through the lenses of racial, social and environmental justice. 

• ART AND ARCHITECTURE 

 A series of artistic and architectural interventions will animate the proceedings, culminating in the bonfire of the art installation “Ente di Decolonizzazione: Borgo Rizza” by DAAR (which was awarded the Golden Lion at the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale). The public performance is a ritual to liberate the Entity of Decolonization from its fascist ghosts, and to begin a new chapter for the realization of a “decolonial house” in the vicinity of Borgo Rizza. 

• COMMONING

“Casa Decoloniale” is a long-term experiment to cultivate forms of commoning that transcend conventional notions of “public” and “private”, “host” and “guest”, “local” and “foreigner”. Linked to other commoning projects initiated in Puglia (Campo Paradiso), Sweden (Summer House), and Palestine (Jericho), Casa Decoloniale is poised to materialize in the Carlentini territory in the forthcoming years.

Assembly at the Entity of Decolonization in Sicily, May 2024. photo Fabian Konokpa

We want to acknowledge that this gathering is happening at very difficult times. We find ourselves in an unprecedented assault on Palestinians, marked by a highly dangerous escalation led by the US government, coupled with a suppression of critical voices in Western institutions. We are entering one of the most obscure chapters of Western history. Spaces for critical conversations are closing down; we see the annual gathering as an alternative platform to continue our conversations and actions elsewhere.

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For the inaugural issue of MMD, Journal of Museum Studies, DAAR reflected on the role that exhibitions have played in their practice. Special thanks to Anna Rossellini and Alessandro Paolo Lena for their engaged questions and careful editing of the conversation.

Exhibited Thoughts of Architecture, Edited by Anna Rossellini, MM Journal of Museum Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1 – 2024, pp. 097-115, “Exhibition as Site of Transgression: An Interview with Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti (DAAR – Decolonizing Architecture Art Research)” by Alessandro Paolo Lena

Exhibition as Site of Transgression, an Interview with Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti (DAAR – Decolonizing Architecture Art Research) by Alessandro Paolo Lena

Journal of Museum Studies