Are there Mountains in the Sky Too?
From ancient times to the present day, mountains have represented for many peoples a passage towards a cosmic and otherworldly beyond. While in older cultures they were understood as the closest earthly threshold to the divine, with the rise of modern thought, however, their meaning was inverted: from a sacred boundary, they became a goal to be reached and measured, a territory to be conquered in order to assert the primacy of human knowledge and action over nature.
Today, in an increasingly unstable and compromised world, we might ask: can the mountain still help us reorient our gaze by helping us clarify what stance we wish to take toward the planet we call home?
Are there Mountains in the Sky Too? / Ci sono montagne anche nel cielo? — a solo exhibition by Benedetta Ferrari — reflects on this question by inverting the Earth-Sky axis to explore the scientific and cultural role of mountains as conduits to the cosmos. Focusing on the Alpine region, the project investigates forms of coexistence between local knowledge and scientific research, extractive industries and nature tourism.
The exhibition unfolds within the Vedetta Alpina, following an ascending vector: from the first floor up to the Panoramic Terrace. Along the path, each work functions like the trace of a map, providing visitors with the coordinates to navigate through different readings of the mountainous landscape, from the slopes to the peaks, but above all to pinpoint the activities that persist in these places, the policies that regulate them, and the ecological consequences they produce.
The centrality of the project, interpreted according to the principles of graphic design, constitutes the aesthetic and spatial backbone of the exhibition, making visible how mountain imaginaries are never a pure given, but rather the product of choices, artifices, and narratives. This approach is linked to the artist’s training at the Design Academy Eindhoven, from which derives a design sensibility attentive to the processes of image construction and composition.
The exhibition is part of Intracore, the fourth edition of the TO.BE open call, promoted by Ghëddo and dedicated to the professional growth of emerging artists.
The program involves collaboration between artists, museums, and spaces dedicated to contemporary art in Turin, through solo and collective exhibitions taking place from February to June 2026.
The entire project is realized with the support of the Compagnia di San Paolo Foundation and the Venesio Foundation, and under the patronage of the Accademia Albertina di Belle Arti di Torino and the City of Turin. The project at the Museomontagna is additionally made possible by: Club Alpino Italiano and the City of Turin; with the surpport of Regione Piemonte, Fondazione CRT, Camera di Commercio di Torino; together with: Infini.to – Planetario di Torino; as part of the Museomontagna Sustainability Program.
