Elegy for a Glacier – Marco Cordero

“Elegy for a Glacier” is the second episode of the exhibition program of BAC Bellano Arte Cultura, the visionary public project that intertwines the heritage of the place with contemporary languages. This new stage takes shape in two places emblematic of the contemporary identity of the village of Bellano, articulating a single narrative across two venues and reinforcing the dialogical approach that characterizes the entire curatorial journey.

Under the artistic direction and curatorship of Chiara Gatti, the protagonist of this episode is Italian artist Marco Cordero, a sculptor sensitive to the fate of the biosphere, whose fragility and memory he interprets through light and elusive materials such as paper, water, words, and dust.

The nave of San Nicolao and the rooms of the Giancarlo Vitali Museum will host a selection of sculptures by Cordero, who for years has focused his research on the eternal themes of the mountains, relying on an unexpected material such as book paper to simulate rocky surfaces, the roughness of stone, and the veins of marble, in a play of allegories between the metamorphosis of matter and the entropy of nature.

In the apse of San Nicolao, the video installation “Elegia per un ghiacciaio” (Elegy for a Glacier), conceived and produced by Storyville, gives its title to the entire project and is inspired by Ludovico Einaudi’s concert “Elegy for the Arctic” produced by Greenpeace in 2015. The images that follow one another offer a muffled journey through the ice, evoking its history and the primordial relationship that united man with the natural world.

The exhibition is a tribute to the balance of coexistence between man and the mountains and to a relationship of primal harmony regenerated to raise awareness of the preservation of the natural world.

The project is part of the Milan Cortina 2026 Cultural Olympics, the multidisciplinary, pluralistic, and widespread program that will enliven Italy to promote Olympic values through culture, heritage, and sport, in view of the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games that Italy will host from February 6 to 22 and March 6 to 15, 2026, respectively.