Michelangelo Pistoletto’s “Three Mirrors” turns city screens into a meditation on peace
A new public art project by Italian artist Michelangelo Pistoletto (b. 1933) is now appearing on digital billboards in nine cities, reframing commercial display space as a site for reflection. Commissioned by the UK-based platform Circa, “Three Mirrors” launched on April 1 and is shown daily at 20:26 local time in London, Los Angeles, Accra, Abidjan, Casablanca, Hong Kong and Seoul. In Italy, the project begins on April 24 in Milan and Rome.
The trilogy consists of “Formula of Creation,” “Statodellarte” and “Third Paradise,” each drawn directly onto large sheets of mirror and filmed at Cittadellarte: Fondazione Pistoletto in Biella, the artist’s hometown in northern Italy. The works extend Pistoletto’s long-running philosophy of The Third Paradise, which he has described as a way of bringing opposites into contact without collapse. In this project, that idea is distilled into the concept of “preventive peace,” a formulation aimed at resisting conflict in a volatile geopolitical moment.
Circa has built its identity around taking over advertising screens for artists, and the platform has previously commissioned Shirin Neshat, Ai Weiwei, Olafur Eliasson and Marina Abramović. Founder Josef O’Connor has said the project asks whether public screens can become civic surfaces rather than instruments of persuasion.
Signed editions are also part of the commission. According to the project details, 20% of proceeds will support Circa and the Pistoletto Cittadellarte foundation’s public and educational programs, while a donation will also be made to the United Nations Global Emergency Response Fund.
For Pistoletto, whose practice has long linked art to social transformation, the project extends a familiar question into the language of the digital city: can a billboard do more than sell, and can visibility itself be redirected toward conscience?
