ESSERI URBANI Officina Creativa Permanente | URBAN SKIN Mostra personale di Jacqueline Ferrante

Here's the translation of the Italian text into English:

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**U Jùse APS** is pleased to reopen the doors of its headquarters at via Nardelli 19 in Locorotondo. **The opening is scheduled for Thursday, May 29, at 7:00 PM**, with a renewed version of the format **“ESSERI URBANI”**, a project that has been awarded at the European level, based on practices of proximity culture that are accessible, participative, and sustainable.

**Not just a festival anymore, but a Permanent Creative Workshop**: a space for cultural experimentation that transforms “U Jùse” into a living laboratory for contemporary art, cultural planning, and social innovation.

Starting in May, we will host **exhibitions, workshops, and cultural events** that engage with and for the present, explore what often remains on the margins, confront the contradictions of our time, and tackle the challenges of ecological, digital, and cultural transitions. They dare to blend knowledge, contaminate languages, and rewrite meanings.

All of this is made possible thanks to the valuable contribution of the **BCC of Locorotondo** and **Orizzonti Futuri ONLUS**.

We inaugurate this new format with **URBAN SKIN**, a solo exhibition by **Jacqueline Ferrante**, an artist based in New York and Italy. Her work is born from a deep connection with the surfaces of the natural world, capturing their textures to explore the concepts of place, memory, and the passage of time. Through marks made with natural materials sourced from the territory, her practice reflects the interaction between history and change, revealing the beauty of imperfection and the silent stories held within the landscape.

After exhibiting in the United States and Europe and participating in artist residencies in New York, Ireland, and Italy, it is our honor to host her in Locorotondo in an exhibition curated by **Francesca Rossi**, a cultural designer with various experiences in contemporary art, who inaugurates her collaboration with our association on this occasion.

“**Urban Skin investigates the urban space as a living organism, its surface as a sensitive skin capable of collecting and returning traces of time, memory, and matter**,” explains curator Francesca Rossi. “**Jacqueline Ferrante, with a deeply tactile and immersive approach, invites us to read the urban landscape beyond architecture, as a breathing body that transforms and preserves memories. Each work is a contemporary archaeological fragment, an emotional map where past and present overlap. Rough and imperfect surfaces become spaces for listening and reflection, offering the viewer the possibility of rediscovering their inner geographies**.”

“**We want to intercept processes rather than products, experiments rather than finished formulas, practices that creatively unsettle rather than aesthetically reassure. Because for us, art is a way to act upon the world. And in this space, we want to continue doing it together with our community, where more and more often the public space is denied, developed under the guise of urban regeneration prone to economic rather than social and cultural logics, and there is a lack of places where one can freely linger, meet, weave relations, and create,**” declares the President of APS U Jùse **Alessandra Neglia**.

The public will be welcomed into a **renovated and multifunctional space**, thanks to a restyling curated by the entire team of the association, coordinated by the artistic director **Mirco Matarante**: a renewed hall, relaxation area with library, refreshment corner, and Wi-Fi connection; exhibition space for artistic interventions, for the collection of works received as gifts over the years from hosted artists, for design and vintage modern decor. But also a location for workshops and cultural meetings, with maximum availability to host initiatives curated by other associations or individuals.

**“U Jùse”** represents today one of the rare examples of a regenerated cultural center active in the small towns of the South. Its grassroots management, transdisciplinary approach, rootedness in the territory, and ability to build networks and attract national and international projects make it a virtuous case of cultural innovation. The center is strongly connected to the urban, artisanal, and associative fabric, and over the years has activated collaborations with schools, universities, professional associations, cultural bodies, foundations, and public institutions. With a model based on a proximity, accessible, and sustainable cultural economy capable of promoting identity, inclusion, and beauty, the goal is to regenerate the bond between places and people, promote the cultural protagonism of the community, attract new audiences, and generate social impact.

**URBAN SKIN**
* **Personal exhibition by Jacqueline Ferrante**
* Curated by Francesca Rossi
* Opening July 29, 7:00 PM
* From May 29 to June 15, 2025
* Hours: every day 10 AM-1 PM and 4 PM-9 PM (closed Monday and Friday morning)

**Contacts**
Email: info@esseriurbani.it
Web: www.esseriurbani.it
Instagram: esseri_urbani
Facebook: @esseriurbani
Web: www.facebook.com/esseriurbani