Edoardo Tresoldi unveils monumental wire-mesh installation in Bari

Edoardo Tresoldi has presented the first portion of a 30-meter-tall environmental installation entirely made of wire mesh at the ancient San Pietro site in Bari Vecchia, a location dating back to the Bronze Age. The scale model was shown at the former church of San Francesco della Scarpa alongside architect Maria Piccarreta, regional secretary of the MiC Puglia, and Bari mayor Vito Leccese. Tresoldi, known for his 2016 reconstruction of the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Siponto, won an international public tender funded by European Union grants worth €2 million. The project, commissioned by the MiC, aims to regenerate the urban space by blending contemporary art with archaeological research, restoring a site long controlled by local crime to the community. The San Pietro site has a layered history: a 12th-century church, a 15th-century Franciscan convent, a Napoleonic-era civil building used as a school and hospital destroyed during WWII by the explosion of the ship Anderson, and demolition in 1969 leaving an archaeological void. Tresoldi's work recreates the historical strata of the site, evoking the various religious buildings constructed over centuries. The artist describes it as a "temporal photograph" where buildings nest inside each other like a matryoshka, addressing the millennial question of the sacred.