Linda Brindisi's Collective Rota Project Unites 14 Italian Communities

After a three-year pause, Italian artist Linda Brindisi (born 1981 in Iseo) has revived her Rote—handmade ecological paper discs—through a collective project involving residents of fourteen municipalities across Italy. During the first COVID-19 lockdown, Brindisi asked participants to email her free-themed drawings, deliberately avoiding the pandemic to encourage pure creativity. Schools, senior centers, oratories, and athletes including swimmer Simone Barlaam and skater Angelo De Benedictis contributed. Brindisi assembled the hundreds of drawings into a three-meter-diameter collage covering an entire Rota. The work will be exhibited in each participating municipality, including Pescara, Tredozio, and Cusago. The project emphasizes unity through diversity and creative expression during difficult times. Brindisi, also a performer, adapted to social distancing by developing this new remote methodology. The Rota was previously shown illegally at the 2007 Venice Biennale gardens.