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
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