Castro projects

Please join us at CASTRO Projects for the Open Studios Turn #09 on 23–24 June 2026. All welcome!

In preparation for the Open Studios, we present a series of short focuses on the participating artists and their ongoing research developed at CASTRO:

FADL FAKHOURI
Fadl Fakhouri is an interdisciplinary artist whose work centers on positionality and poetic statements of determination. Their practice has been presented at SFAI, Times Square, The Poetry Project, The Cincinnati Art Museum, and The Jewish Museum. They hold a BA in Biology from UC Berkeley and an MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University, and have held positions at Pratt Institute, Sotheby’s Institute of Art, and Tripwire Journal.

During their time at CASTRO, Fakhouri used pasta as a starting point for playful and critical research. They explored the development of Italian-American cuisine, the geography of Molise (often referred to as “the region that doesn’t exist”), and the weaponization of food as a marker of identity - particularly in relation to Italian migrants in the United States, who were historically derogatorily labeled “Macaroni” during periods of intense anti-Italian and anti-Catholic sentiment.

The engagement with Italian culture exposes how deeply their practice relies on symbols and culturally charged materials, while also opening a consideration of the need to move beyond them.

Please join us at CASTRO for the Open Studios Turn #09 on 23-24 June 2026. All welcome!

In preparation for the Open Studios, we present a series of short focuses on the participating artists and their ongoing research developed at CASTRO:

ALEJANDRA VARELA PERERA
Alejandra Varela Perera (b. 1995, Mexico) currently lives and works in Milan and Mexico City. Carrying out research in continuous transformation and deeply linked to the pictorial language, she reflects with an almost anthropological eye on the stratifications of power and the consequent links with the memory of her own personal and cultural history.

During her time at CASTRO, Alejenadra further developed a body of paintings rooted in her ongoing interest in portraiture and storytelling. Drawing from images, memories, and relationships, she investigates how individual experiences can become part of broader, shared narratives.

The works presented focus on familiar figures that move between reality and fiction, exploring themes of identity, belonging, memory, and human connection. Through the use of color and portraiture, the artist seeks to preserve fleeting moments and emotions, creating characters that embody both intimate and collective histories.

Please join us at CASTRO for Open Studios Turn #09 on 23-24 June 2026. All welcome!

In preparation for Open Studios, we present a series of short focuses on the participating artists and their ongoing research developed at CASTRO:

GIORGIO NIGRA
Giorgio Nigra (Sassari, 1999) is an artist working with photography, image re-mediation, performance and installation.

His research-based practice investigates how contemporary subjects inhabit both physical and digital spaces, structured by the imperatives of production and consumption. Through images, objects, documents and personal narratives, he addresses solitude, withdrawal, domestic space, online identity, and the material conditions that shape everyday life.

Particular attention is given to the colonial condition of Sardinia within the Italian state, and more broadly to forms of minority subordination and peripheralization produced within contemporary geopolitical and economic systems. Within this framework, his work considers how power is exercised through territory, and how local identities are shaped through processes of imposition, adaptation and resistance.

During his time at CASTRO, Giorgio has been developing a research on the colonial subordination of Sardinia within the Italian state, with a focus on contemporary forms of resistance to this condition, including armed violence and the historical legacy of banditry as a persistent counter-history of territorial conflict.

This research has led to the beginning of a series of installation-based works that reflect on road signage as a manifestation of institutional control over territory and language: devices for organizing space and prescribing movement, and on the vandalism of street signs as an act of refusal, disrupting and contesting this authority.

Please join us at CASTRO for Open Studios Turn #09 on 23-24 June 2026. All welcome!

In preparation for Open Studios, we present a series of short focuses on the participating artists and their ongoing research developed at CASTRO:

NATALYA MARCONINI FALCONER
Natalya Marconini Falconer’s practice emerges from gaps in familial and regional memories of place. By working with these lapses in memory, they accumulate the material aftermaths from cycles of industry, migration and natural events related to southern Italy. Moving between sculpture, installation and writing, layering is used as a technique to echo the way the past folds itself into lived experience.

During their time at CASTRO, Natalya has been exploring gestures of failure in former industrial labour through small assemblage works, incorporating metal casts, debris, and offcuts from the production of previous artworks.

Natalya has also initiated research into the development of a new installation work exploring spatial politics of fascism, domestic architecture, ideas of compression and historical repetition.

During this time, Natalya has also been developing the production of a site-specific, permanent sculpture ‘Canzàre’ for the village of Pofi, Lazio, as part of Una Boccata D’Arte opening 20 June 2026.

Please join us at CASTRO for Open Studios Turn #09 on 23–24 June 2026. All welcome!

In preparation for Open Studios, we present a series of short focuses on the participating artists and their ongoing research developed at CASTRO:

DAKOTA GUO
Dakota Guo (b. 1994, Taiyuan, China) is a Netherlands-based artist working across performance, installation, moving image, and speculative research.
Through her ongoing project Tools for Speculative Archaeology (2023–), she devises ritual technologies that rework archaeological methods, bureaucratic procedures, and funerary practices as unstable instruments for negotiating access between the living and the dead.

During her time at CASTRO, Guo continued her investigation of archaeology as a necrological infrastructure through which the living attempt—and often fail—to regulate contact with the dead. This research informed Lost Assets, an interactive installation staged as a restoration workspace for displaced underworld possessions, and Permission to Trespass, an essay film project examining archaeological access to burial grounds and the partial opening of underworld territories to the living.

A parallel line of research focused on the magical finds from the Fountain of Anna Perenna in Rome, particularly defixiones (curse tablets) and wax figurines. Extending her earlier work on tomb-quelling documents, Guo reconsiders these objects not simply as ritual deposits, but as forms of underworld paperwork whose efficacy depends on their transmission across different media, custodians, and realms. Through this reading, archaeological acts of excavation, registration, and preservation become part of the continuing life of the contract itself.

Please join us at CASTRO for Open Studios Turn #09 on 23–24 June 2026. All welcome!

In preparation for Open Studios, we present a series of short focuses on the participating artists and their ongoing research developed at CASTRO:

DAKOTA GUO
Dakota Guo (b. 1994, Taiyuan, China) is a Netherlands-based artist working across performance, installation, moving image, and speculative research.

Through her ongoing project Tools for Speculative Archaeology (2023–), she devises ritual technologies that rework archaeological methods, bureaucratic procedures, and funerary practices as unstable instruments for negotiating access between the living and the dead.

During her time at CASTRO, Guo continued her investigation of archaeology as a necrological infrastructure through which the living attempt—and often fail—to regulate contact with the dead. This research informed Lost Assets, an interactive installation staged as a restoration workspace for displaced underworld possessions, and Permission to Trespass, an essay film project examining archaeological access to burial grounds and the partial opening of underworld territories to the living.

A parallel line of research focused on the magical finds from the Fountain of Anna Perenna in Rome, particularly defixiones (curse tablets) and wax figurines. Extending her earlier work on tomb-quelling documents, Guo reconsiders these objects not simply as ritual deposits, but as forms of underworld paperwork whose efficacy depends on their transmission across different media, custodians, and realms. Through this reading, archaeological acts of excavation, registration, and preservation become part of the continuing life of the contract itself.

Please join us at CASTRO for Open Studios Turn #09 on 23–24 June!

To celebrate the end of Turn #09, the participants of CASTRO’s Studio Program will open their studios to the public.

Artists participating:
Fadl Fakhouri
Dakota Guo
Natalya Marconini Falconer
Giorgio Nigra
Alejandra Varela Perera

On 23–24 June, from 2 to 7 pm, studio visits will be possible by appointment. To book a visit, please send an email to [email protected].

On 24 June, from 7 to 9 pm, CASTRO will open its doors for a public event with drinks.

All welcome!

Please join us at Fondazione Pastificio Cerere for the next CRIT on Tuesday 16 June. All welcome!

CRIT #56
Artists presenting:
Vanshika Agrawal
Giorgio Nigra

Facilitated by Fabiola Fiocco.
The event will take place at Fondazione Pastificio Cerere (Via degli Ausoni, 7, Roma)

Please join us at Fondazione Pastificio Cerere for the next CRIT on Tuesday 16 June. All welcome!

CRIT #56
Artists presenting:
Vanshika Agrawal
Giorgio Nigra

Facilitated by Fabiola Fiocco.
The event will take place at Fondazione Pastificio Cerere (Via degli Ausoni, 7, Roma)