ARS SINE FINIBUS | ART BEYOND BORDERS: THE FIRST EDITION OF THE CROSS-BORDER ART PROJECT HAS CONCLUDED

The Gradis'ciutta winery hosted the awards ceremony for the first edition of Ars Sine Finibus , a cross-border project promoted by Sinefinis , founded by Robert Princic of the Italian winery Gradis'ciutta and Matja¸ Četrtič of the Slovenian winery Ferdinand. The initiative aims to transform the border vineyards between Italy and Slovenia into a permanent art park, where site-specific installations by young artists become a tool for dialogue between art and nature, community and territory. This journey looks to a sustainable future through natural materials and innovative languages, in harmony with the program of Gorizia and Nova Gorica as European Capitals of Culture 2025 .
The project is implemented with the support of the GO!2025 Small Projects Fund of the Interreg VI-A Italy-Slovenia Programme.

The ceremony was attended by numerous institutional figures from the two countries, including the mayors of San Floriano del Collio and Gorizia, Marjan Drufovka and Rodolfo Ziberna , and the Slovenian ambassador to Italy, Matja¸ Longar , and the Italian ambassador to Slovenia, Giuseppe Cavagna , a tangible sign of a cultural collaboration that goes beyond borders.

The works presented by the young artists were:

• Sconfinare by Sofia Aloni and Lorenzo Lavezzo : recounts the fracture of 1947 when a political border divided cities, families, and communities, transforming the staves of the barrels into columns that become a demographic graph and, at the same time, a symbolic gate capable of uniting what history has separated. Materials: used wine barrels.
• "Spazio di vite" by Chiara Andolina , Tommaso Marchesi , and Simona Tessaro : a monumental-scale wire cage woven from iron and vine shoots, which becomes a habitable architecture and a symbol of conviviality and encounter. Materials: rebar and wire, vine shoots.
• Fort and Sanctuary by Pietro Chiarello and Jasmin Sara Prezioso : Fort, an open structure, in dialogue with the sky and nature, reminiscent of military palisades but transformed into a place for play and socializing. Materials: wooden palisades for viticulture, blue enamel, and wire. The sanctuary, on the other hand, is a gigantic blue barrel transformed into a habitable structure housing agricultural tools like religious icons, where play and spirituality coexist. Materials: barrel, wood, gravel, blue enamel, and antique agricultural tools.
• Cow without a passport by Lili Grudina and Daniele Poli : an antique iron door featuring a stencil of a cow divided by a border and an abstract composition, evoking memory, abstraction, and the transcendence of boundaries. Materials: Iron door from the Princic family.
• Synergos by Nailia Khamzina and Vanessa Stefan : two intertwined bodies become a vital core at the center of the sculpture, with barrel hoops and a mosaic of colored glass filtering the light, a symbol of coexistence and bridges between peoples. Materials: glass, wire, barrel hoops.

The jury prize was awarded to the work Scritto nelle pietre by Juliana Florez Garcia , Gloria Veronica Lavagnini , and Tajda Tomšič , an arch and wall reminiscent of the former border, constructed of marl, stone, and gold inserts, transforming the historical wound into a passage and threshold toward a shared consciousness. Suspended stones and metal stems evoke a flowery meadow, restoring lightness and poetry to a painful memory. The international jury, composed of Salvatore Marsiglione, director of the MAG Gallery; Andrea Formilli Fendi, president of the Candido Foundation; Carla Fendi Speroni; Elisabetta Cudicio, director of Studio Celiberti; Nelida Nemec, an internationally renowned art historian; and Alberto Perazza, owner of MAGIS design, recognized the evocative power of the work and its ability to transform history into a universal language. The visibly moved artists received a cash prize and a work donated by maestro Giorgio Celiberti.

Following the ceremony, the installation " So(g)no" by artist Marco Nereo Rotelli , who was present at the event, was also inaugurated. The work, created with the contributions of Professor Riccardo Valentini , composer and radio host Alessio Bertallot , Slovenian poet Aleš Šteger, Italian poet Valerio Magrelli , and Friulian artist Giorgio Celiberti , transforms the vineyard space into an immersive journey of light and poetry, inviting visitors and the community to share a sensorial and reflective experience.

" We are proud to have believed in Ars Sine Finibu s," said Robert Princic and Matja¸ Četrtič , " because it demonstrates that art and wine can become tools for dialogue and unity between communities. Collio and Brda have always been a meeting place: today, thanks to these young artists, we have taken a further step towards a shared, sustainable, and borderless future ."

With Ars Sine Finibus , Collio and Brda are not only territories of excellent wine, but become an international cultural laboratory, where creativity, memory and nature meet to speak a universal language: that of art that unites.