ARTISTS Alessandro Valeri
Sepphoris
Sepphoris is an artistic project by Alessandro Valeri that began in 2011 following a visit to an orphanage in Tzippori, near Nazareth, Israel. Run by the Sisters of Saint Anne, the orphanage hosts children of different ethnic and religious backgrounds and represents a rare example of coexistence in a region often marked by conflict. For Valeri, this encounter became the starting point of a long-term artistic reflection on the relationship between art and reality. Rather than documenting a place, the project seeks to reveal what the artist defines as the “normality of good” the quiet gestures and daily acts that sustain a fragile yet real community.
The first major public presentation of the project took place in 2015 during the 56th International Art Exhibition of the Biennale di Venezia, curated by Raffaele Gavarro and presented at the Molino Stucky on the island of Giudecca. Large-scale photographic works, later reworked with painterly interventions, were suspended within the monumental architecture of the building, creating a vertical installation that invited viewers to move through the space and experience the images from multiple perspectives. The photographs focus on small details of everyday life within the orphanage — objects, rooms, traces of presence — transforming them into fragments of memory and reflection.
From its inception, Sepphoris was conceived not only as an artistic work but also as a concrete gesture. The artworks were donated to the orphanage, and their circulation within the art system contributes directly to supporting the institution and improving the living conditions of the children. In this way, the project explores the possibility that art may intervene in reality not only symbolically, but also through tangible impact.
Over the years, the project has continued to evolve through a series of exhibitions and installations, including Lasciami entrare at MACRO Testaccio in Rome (2016), Una sola possibilità at the MACRO – Museo d’Arte Contemporanea di Roma (2017), and An Iron Ring at the MAXXI – Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo in Rome (2020). Through these successive presentations, the work expanded into immersive environments and installations that invite the viewer to engage physically and emotionally with the themes of childhood, responsibility and shared humanity.
Sepphoris ultimately proposes a vision of art that goes beyond representation, transforming the artwork into a space of experience, awareness and collective responsibility.
01 ALESSANDRO VALERI
A DIALOGUE OF ARCHETYPES
Alessandro Valeri Exhibition
56° BIENNALE
Sepphoris
PANORAMA – NEW YORK
The New York works represent one of the most powerful cores of Alessandro Valeri’s visual research
THE CIRCUS
“The Circus” is a photographic series born from Alessandro Valeri’s immersive experience inside the Togni Circus in 1999