Opera Viva Barriera di Milano, the Billboard, is an urban art project that adds meaning to the concept of public art by virtue of the use of the pre-existing in the conception of the work of art, in this specific case a 6x3m municipal space for public posters (cimasa 50530) in Piazza Bottesini in Turin (Barriera di Milano, a multi-ethnic neighbourhood in Turin) is interpreted by national and international artists throughout the year.
2013 saw the birth of the project Flashback is Opera Viva with which the artist Alessandro Bulgini declared the event Flashback, art is all contemporary, and all the masterpieces presented Opera Viva.
In 2014 Opera Viva leaves the spaces of art to enter the suburbs with Opera Viva Barriera di Milano, the Billboard, marking the countdown to the event in November.
The project is developed around a precise idea of the relationship between art and public space, and the function of a work within a context and an urban community. Through this year-long operation, the fair connects different areas of the city of Turin and different time zones (the ancient, the modern, the contemporary in its making): in the conviction that art must leave institutional spaces, go down to the street, penetrate reality, move constantly within it, happily integrate itself into the dimension of everyday existence. On the occasion of the fair, the images of the posters, together with all the fragments of life collected, are brought together in a single exhibition to narrate this open window on the world and for the world.
Thus, in the months leading up to and following an exhibition of the Opera Viva Barriera di Milano project, the Billboard sees numerous Italian and international artists interpreting this advertising space with the aim of bringing art to the people and restoring physical and mental spaces to creativity. The experiment, which was particularly successful in previous editions, confirms Flashback's desire to present itself as a moment of cultural reflection that cannot ignore its own contemporaneity.