Stone Oven House

Casa
Italia
Piemonte
Stone Oven House

art residency project, based on rural practises. DESCRIPTION

The Stone Oven House is an art residence, based on rural practises in a post-industrial context.

Aimed at combining social and environmental harmony, we are establishing an experimental platform for life and creation. The activities in residence follow the principles of: sustainability and shareconomy. The guests of the residence are invited to reflect on the idea that the village is the city of the future: a place where people work online and live in nature, growing their own vegetables. One

of the main functional elements of the residence is a large stone oven, used to bake food and to dispose of the accomplished art, in order to generate the heat for the oven itself. Art works that are not suitable to be burnt in the stone oven, are reused to satisfy utilitarian needs. Contemporary art, as a reflection of today’s society, embodies the laws of the art market: artistic overproduction does not match consumer enjoyment. So the art recycling in the Stone Oven House enters this scenario, as a symbolic protest against the conventional dynamics of the contemporary market and as a matter for reflection on production and consumption, including art. Therefore, the inevitability of art recycling gives artists freedom to create art regardless of its placement on the art market shelves. Each activity in residence then tries to respect the sustainability reasoning: from the creation of art to its fruition, from the procurement of food to interaction with the local community. We dedicate, moreover, particular attention to the improvement of offline interactions, crucial for a good and healthy community. We invite to the Stone Oven House both artists and non artists with the mission to bring them together in their lives and professions. We want it to be a pleasant workplace for artists and an unconventional residence for the other guests. Learn more: http://balovinandbeccato.info/en/en-residencyproject/

16/06/2026

We believe artists residencies are an opportunity for everybody, offering alternatives views on the world.

For this reason, we are sharing the appeal of our friend and association member Giuseppe Gavazza to support the Spitsbergen Artists Center Spitsbergen Artists Center in Longyearbyen, Svalbard, in the heart of the Arctic. Giuseppe had the chance to be artist resident there.

A former miners’ dormitory transformed into a space for artistic research and international exchange, it is now at risk of becoming yet another accommodation facility.

Protecting places like this means defending cultural diversity, the freedom to experiment, and the possibility of imagining different futures.

If you can, please sign and share the petition.

https://www.openpetition.org/no/petition/online/protect-affordable-creative-workspaces-and-nybyens-creative-community

14/06/2026

Yesterday we opened The Rorà Notebook by Nicola Bertasi.

It is a small exhibition about a small mountain village. And yet, within it, centuries seem to coexist.

The stories of the Waldensians persecuted for their faith. The sketches of partisans. A Jewish artist hidden from Nazi-Fascist violence in a stone house. Grenades still scattered across the alpine pastures after military exercises. Russian artists fleeing repression. Ukrainian refugees escaping war.

At first glance, these stories have nothing in common. They belong to different times and different people.

But perhaps they are connected by something profoundly human.

As Nicola writes, destruction is often orderly and mechanical. Resistance to death, instead, is human.

Over two residencies at Casa col Forno in 2021 and 2022, Nicola listened to local voices, explored family archives and the archives of the Waldensian Church, collecting fragments rather than certainties. The Rorà Notebook is not a history lesson. It is an invitation to pay attention to the traces people leave behind: memories, gestures of courage, acts of kindness, and the stubborn insistence on remaining human.

Thank you to Nicola Bertasi, to everyone who shared their stories and archives, and to all who joined us for the opening yesterday.

11/06/2026

Nicola Bertasi Nicola Bertasi, author of Il Quaderno di Rorà, whose opening we are hosting this Saturday, was in residence in Rorà twice: in 2021 and 2022.

His second stay came at a difficult moment for us. After the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, we found ourselves questioning the role of our association, our home and our cultural work.

What can a small place in the mountains do in the face of war?
It can stay open. Welcome. Listen.

At that time, Nicola encountered Ukrainian refugees, Russian artists fleeing repression, people from the village, local memories and stories. He also made a research work in the archives of Tavola Valdese and in the family archive of Terracini family.

In Il Quaderno di Rorà, this present enters into dialogue with other traces of the territory: the Waldensian struggle for freedom, the lives of partisans, and the story of a Jewish sculptor and painter hidden during the second world war in the house.

Thank you to everyone who met Nicola, who agreed to be interviewed and portrayed, and who shared a fragment of their story.

Opening Saturday 13th June at 5pm.

23/05/2026

Il Quaderno di Rorà
exhibition by Nicola Bertasi

Rorà is small: a handful of houses clinging to the mountainside. And yet, within this village, stories of imprisonment and freedom, oppression and resistance, exile, war, escape and return are intertwined.

Il Quaderno di Rorà is a work by Nicola Bertasi at the intersection of photography, archival research and text. The artist was in residence in Rorà in 2021 and 2022, collecting interviews and conducting research at the Archive of the Waldensian Church.

The exhibition revolves around a yellowed notebook: not so much a historical document in the strict sense, but rather a fragile testimony, a slightly battered objet trouvé, left free to speak.

Within its pages we encounter the resistance of the Waldensian people, the lives of partisans, the memory of persecution, and the stone houses that protected those who were fleeing. The work reaches into the present, where Stone Oven House appears as a place of welcome and resistance in the face of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Nicola Bertasi, born in 1983, lived in Paris and now is based in Milan. He is an independent photographer and visual artist, with a humanist background and a Master’s degree in Modern History. His work has been exhibited in international galleries and festivals. His main projects include Like Rain Falling from the Sky and The Pandemic Papers.

Opening: Saturday, June 13, 5:30 PM
On view until Sunday, June 14, 1:00 PM

Free entrance

21/05/2026

In a few days’ time, the retreat focusing on movement – and dance in particular – with Natasha Pirogova and Maria Podkopaeva will begin. We’ve hosted it a few times before and know just how magical and liberating it is.

Sign up now! There’s still one room available, for private use or to share with a friend or partner. Details and information can be found via the link and in our bio.

https://natashapirogova.com/libera

12/05/2026

It’s the perfect time of year to work whilst enjoying the great outdoors. Why not plan your own creative retreat, just like our friend Valerj?

Apply at this link: astra.stoneovenhouse.com/guests

11/05/2026

Friends, the last few months have been busy for us, what with renovating both indoor and outdoor spaces and working online to update the website and create a new site dedicated to the parallel hospitality project the association is collaborating on, namely Stone Oven Stay . It can sometimes be difficult to juggle so many different areas of work at the same time, which is why we haven’t yet finished the new site or updated the current one, and the spaces are still a work in progress. But we want to share a new application system, which we are currently testing, for artists and requests to stay or visit. We have designed a form to fill in that includes an automatic calculator to help guests work out their own budget, taking into account their expectations, needs and alternative contributions such as artistic, creative or manual work. For years we have aspired to have a system of our own that would make guests self-sufficient in the sustainable assessment of their proposals. You can try it out and let us know if you like it, but above all, you can use it to book your residency at Stone Oven House!

Link for artists application astra.stoneovenhouse.com/artists

Link for guests application
astra.stoneovenhouse.com/guests

05/05/2026

“War is grief.
But on the other hand… we would never have met otherwise.”
— Valentina, Zaporizhzhia

Yesterday Valentina, whom Yara calls her grandmother, said these words at Stone Oven House.

Sergei nodded… and then stopped himself.

Because the truth is, they might have met even without war.

In one of those strange coincidences life sometimes creates, years before Stone Oven House, during the LiveJournal days, Sergei had already known Valentina’s daughter-in-law. They had travelled together, hitchhiked, shared adventures, and years later she wrote that one day she might come visit Sergei and Claudia in Italy.

But life chose another road.

Tanks entered Ukraine.

And instead of her, Valentina arrived.

She came with her husband, grandchildren, and relatives. They stayed at Stone Oven House for some time… and then returned home, to Zaporizhzhia, where other loved ones were waiting.

Now, every year, they come back.

Because Yara calls Valentina “grandma.”
Because here in Italy, they now have family too.

This spring they came again — together with friends, Tanya and Yuri, neighbors from their summer houses back home.

Yuri showed photos:
a pond he had dug with his own hands and filled with carp…
pieces of a drone on his land…
a looted kitchen.

Some of the closest people in our lives arrive by roads that should never have existed.

And yet… here we are.

26/04/2026

We were delighted to host the Estonian traveling theater Tricktrek during a stopover on their European tour, which will take them to 18 festivals. This time, we didn’t host their show, but we served as a platform where they could rehearse their show *Khuti* with a smaller cast, as the two of them will be working on it over the coming months. We can’t wait to host them with their new show, which they’ve started working on at the residency in France!

20/04/2026

Ciao Oliver, it was great having you with us. Have a safe trip home, and we hope to have you back again later this year!

It’s been two and a half months of hard work, but we’ve shared some wonderful and unique moments together—like when you taught us how to make chocolates from scratch, and all the chats we had around the table in the evenings. Your help was invaluable, and your fresh perspective on things and the world helped us!

If you, like Oliver, would like to volunteer with us, check out our website at www.stoneovenhouse.com and get in touch.

Indirizzo

Via Maestra 4, Rorá
Piemonte
10060

Telefono

+393405611840

Sito Web

http://Stoneovenhouse.com/

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