Sacred Planet

In collaboration with the YOU – Education for Children in Need Foundation, the MAXXI-Museo Nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo in Rome presents Rita Sabo’s multifaceted works inspired by the theme of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the Unesco 2030 Agenda.

From July 4 to August 4, 2024, the Roman museum will host the Austrian artist’s solo exhibition entitled Sacred Planet, which features 12 paintings, some of them large-scale, and 19 sculptures showing the various Sustainable Development Goals that will be displayed in the Maxxi’s Corner Space, with the aim of raising awareness of the urgent implementation of Agenda 2030.

This is a remarkable nucleus of works by the young artist already exhibited in 2023 in the well-known Ludwig Museum in Koblenz, in the historic Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana in St. Mark’s Square in Venice and, more recently, at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris; the “Roman stage,” however, represents an absolute novelty.

The centerpiece of the exhibition is the sculpture Sacred Planet, ‘Sacred Planet,’ a meaningful symbol created by Rita Sabo herself, showing the dignity and inviolability of the Earth. A planet surrounded by two rings symbolizing the continuous flow of energy with which she expresses her holistic vision of global sustainability creating a contemporary symbol of great relevance and topicality. The Sacred Planet appears in a fleet of 17 versions in different colors that correspond exactly to the colors of the 17 sustainability goals of the 2030 Agenda, thus establishing a direct link to the urgent implementation of the goals by 2030. As an icon of a new consciousness in art, Sacred Planet stands in support of global change and invites visitors to immerse themselves in Sabo’s engaging multi-world and mentally revolve around this symbol with the goal of paying greater attention to and respect for the Earth as a sacred habitat of biodiversity.

Sponsored and organized by the Association for Art in Public, the exhibition is held in collaboration with the YOU Foundation – Education for Children in Need, in official relations with UNESCO. Once managed the institutional relations with the Maxxi Museum, took care of the installations and press office activities.

The Artist

Rita Sabo grew up in the North Caucasus and later in Basel and Zurich, among other places, where she first attended local art schools such as the Invers School of Design in Olten, Switzerland. She then attended the renowned Central Saint Martin’s College of Art and Design in London, where she completed her studies in jewelry design.

In her visual language, the young artist, who grew up multilingual, explores the meaning of old symbols in the context of today and allows them to be reinterpreted in her work in the sense of an artistic update. In the form of a new encyclopedia of symbols, which bears Sabo’s artistic signature, mystical and religious symbols of the past receive a contemporary, future-oriented artistic treatment. Many of the symbols that are considered obsolete today are artistically reinterpreted by Sabo and their symbolic value made reusable for the 21st century.