Art is prophetic. Artist Edoardo Malagigi, an international lecturer and designer, is convinced of this, as he creates his monumental sculptures from discarded materials that make us reflect on our relationship with the environment, living things and what we consider “waste.”
“I Refuse” is the widespread exhibition between art, environment and active citizenship that will open May 10 and remain open untilJune 8, 2025 in Pontassieve and Pelago in the Province of Florence.
The exhibition catalog reads, “And if there is one human thing capable of prophecy, well that is art.”
More than an exhibition, it is an act of resistance. A refusal, precisely, to passively accept the environmental, social and cultural degradation that characterizes our time. After all, we are children of a lie as the great Pinocchio seems to remember that of infinite growth on a finite planet.
Art as rebellion and denunciation
The title itself – “I refuse” – is a play on words that becomes manifest. Refuse means to oppose, but it also recalls the material concept of waste, the discard, the product discarded by the production system. This is where Malagigi’s research starts: from waste as a symbol of our civilization, used, abused and thrown away.
Like the Renaissance, which was transformed from a heritage of liberation into a product for tourist consumption, art is in danger of losing its liberating function. Malagigi reverses this logic: he makes waste not just raw material, but language to tell the story of our time.
The materials become the message
Pulper from paper mills, granules for water filtration, waste wood, defective tetrapaks,: everything that is normally expelled from the production cycle becomes the protagonist. Malagigi builds cultural icons and symbolic creatures: from Pinocchio (declined in different forms and materials) to an Oscar made of waste, to totemic animals such as the rhinoceros, the dodo or the sperm whale, threatened by the climate crisis.
Each work is a memento, a silent cry: reminding us that time is running out. The reference to the Doomsday Clock, the Apocalypse Clock that marks 89 seconds to catastrophe in 2025, makes the message even more urgent.
Decreasing art
“I refuse” proposes a radical reversal of aesthetic and productive hierarchies: art does not grow, but declines. It does not dominate, but guards. It does not glorify conventional beauty, but elevates waste to visual truth to a symbol that conveys and speaks to the human. In this journey, Malagigi fuses art, design and environmental activism, showing that there is a concrete alternative to self-destruction.
His sculptures involve all the actors in the production chain-materials, workers, consumers, the excluded-transforming each project into a collective work, capable of overcoming the authorial individualism typical of European art
A call to action: 89 seconds to act
The exhibition is also an invitation to “do something,” to act in the few symbolic seconds we still have left. Like the monumental Pinocchio, we too are children of a lie: that of infinite growth on a finite planet. But we can still change.
With “I refuse”, Malagigi asks us to step outside the boundaries of passivity, to reject indifference, to reconnect with a form of art that becomes care, custody, responsibility.
Exhibition news:
The exhibition will be accompanied by lectures and workshops open to the public for open discussion and collective reflection.
Opening: Saturday, May 10, 2025, 6:00 p.m.
Sieve Workshop, Via del Molino 17 – San Francesco di Pelago (FI)
Free admission
Introduces: the Mayor of Pelago, Nicola Povoleri, and the Vice Mayor of Pontassieve, Filippo Pratesi
Exhibition venues
- Sieve Workshop, Via del Molino 17, San Francesco di Pelago, Pelago,
Major works of Edoardo Malagigi
- Cairoli Square, Pontassieve
John Sperm Whale, monumental installation on marine pollution - Verdi Square , San Francesco di Pelago, Pelago
Tetrapak sphere, metaphor for excess waste - Palazzo Comunale, Pontassieve
thematic room dedicated to extinction, with video interview between the artist and the Director of the Tethys Institute, Sabina Airoldi.
Various meetings will be held in conjunction with the IO MI RIFIUTO exhibition to follow the schedule see the exhibition website: www.iomirifiuto2025.com
