ARTEMISIA GENTILESCHI

CARPENETO (AL), 14 November 2026 — public access by reservation.

What if a piece of jewellery could become a gateway to a work of art? This idea lies at the heart of BEYOND THE FREEPORT — ISSUE #2: ARTEMISIA GENTILESCHI, a project by Annelies Nuy — Dutch designer and curator of art and immersive experiences — bringing together art, contemporary jewellery and virtual reality. The project will be presented on the afternoon of 8 November, and on 11 and 14 November, at Club Carpeneto in the heart of Alto Monferrato.

Following its presentation in Milan during Milano Jewelry Week 2026, the project moves into a historic house in the region for a private experience designed to be encountered individually, by appointment. At its centre are twelve sculptural jewellery pieces from the collection CONVERSATION PIECES — FRAGMENTS OF HISTORY.

Each piece carries a QR code leading to a virtual-reality environment, explored through VR headsets, where visitors can encounter a private collection of works by Artemisia Gentileschi. The jewellery becomes more than an object to wear: it acts as a threshold between the physical and the digital, between the intimacy of an object and access to cultural heritage that is otherwise difficult to see.

ARTEMISIA, BEYOND HER STORY

More than four centuries after her lifetime, Artemisia Gentileschi is still often discussed primarily through her personal history: her courage, the difficulties she faced and her position as a woman artist in a world dominated by men. This history was essential to restoring her place in art history, but it can also overshadow the force and specificity of her painting.

BEYOND THE FREEPORT invites visitors to return to the paintings themselves and to look again. The positioning of the figures, the psychological tension of gestures, the relationship between figures and space, and Artemisia's use of light and colour become ways of questioning her visual language anew.

What changes when subjects traditionally represented through a male gaze are painted by a woman? What new readings emerge from expressions, relationships between figures and compositional choices? And what knowledge of women's experience in the seventeenth century may still be held within these images?

Nuy's research places Gentileschi's biography alongside a renewed attention to her artistic identity and to the continuing ability of her paintings to speak to the present.

WHO GETS TO SEE CULTURAL HERITAGE?

The project also addresses a contemporary question: access to art and the relationship between private ownership and collective memory. A significant part of cultural heritage remains in private collections, outside the normal exhibition circuit.

How can these works become available to new forms of knowledge and experience? In BEYOND THE FREEPORT, virtual reality becomes a means of bringing visitors closer to a selection of works by Artemisia Gentileschi without requiring the paintings themselves to move. The QR code carried by each jewellery piece opens a route into the digital experience, transforming a tangible object into a connection with images, stories and art-historical context.

Through IN CIRCULATION, the Conversation Pieces are conceived to pass from one person to another and to generate new encounters and conversations. The project proposes an alternative form of cultural circulation in which ownership is not the only point of value; knowing, interpreting and sharing meaning also become central.

A PRIVATE ENCOUNTER, A PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

At Club Carpeneto, the project unfolds through individual appointments in an intimate setting that encourages visitors to spend time with the jewellery and explore the immersive environment through VR.

It is an encounter between artistic research and technology in which jewellery becomes a point of access to art history — and an invitation to look again at what we thought we already knew. Because what we cannot see risks being forgotten.