One year of IDOLO: a golden treasure in the Sangone river
On 16 October 2025, the first Artwork for Mirafiori was inaugurated in Mirafiori Sud, the #ClimaGen pilot area in Torino. One year later, we look back at IDOLO, a work by British artist Mike Nelson that rests in the shallow water of the Sangone river.
©Mauro Vallinotto
✦ A wild river between the housing estates
From the 1960s onwards, Mirafiori Sud developed as a residential area for factory workers, many of them employed in the FIAT plants. Between the tower blocks, the low-rise housing and the public park runs the Sangone, a wild mountain river. It comes down from the Cottian Alps and joins the Po beyond Torino. Its water rises and falls with the mountain rain and the melting ice, in strong contrast with the ordered layout of the estates around it.
In the 1950s, this stretch of the river served as a film set for low-budget adventure films based on the novels of Emilio Salgari. These films presented the river as an exotic and faraway land. For Mike Nelson, this history shows how beautiful and unusual this often forgotten part of the river is. It also gave him the idea of adventure and of a treasure hidden in the water. The Sangone even has a reputation as a gold-bearing river that once attracted gold seekers.
✦ A golden engine that the river will slowly change
IDOLO is a discarded Fiat 650 N truck engine from the late 1960s, with gold-plated sections. It lies in the riverbed next to the foot and cycle bridge. Depending on the water level, which changes with the seasons, the engine is sometimes covered by water and sometimes visible.
For Mike Nelson, the engine is both an object and a sculpture. It recalls the industry that provided the resources to build the neighbourhood around it. He describes it as “a catalyst of sorts for the landscape around it”. The work also refers to Roadside Picnic, a 1972 science fiction novel by the Strugatsky brothers, in which visitors from space leave mysterious objects behind after a short stop. Like those objects, the engine is a remnant of another time.
IDOLO was created as a temporary public work. The gold layer is only a few microns thick. Over time, the rising water will wash it away and spread it into the riverbed downstream, and the base metal will become visible again. In this way, the work tells a story of wonder, greed and disappointment, and shows how human life is always connected with the natural world.
✦ An artist chosen together with the neighbourhood
IDOLO is promoted by our partner Fondazione della Comunità di Mirafiori (Fondazione Mirafiori). This philanthropic organisation has supported Mirafiori Sud since 2008. Its vision is inspired by the New European Bauhaus, the EU initiative that connects sustainability, inclusion and beauty.
IDOLO is the first artwork of the programme Mirafiori dopo il Mito | Arte. The programme offers new ways to see and understand the neighbourhood and highlights its local treasures. It also builds links between the community, public institutions such as the City of Torino, and cultural organisations.
To choose the artist, Fondazione Mirafiori created the Tavolo delle Idee (Table of Ideas). This group brings together five experts in contemporary art and urban regeneration: Francesca Comisso (a.titolo), Marianna Vecellio (Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art), Rita Cararo (Kallipolis), Orietta Brombin (PAV Parco Arte Vivente) and Chiara Lucchini (Urban Lab Torino). Together they looked for an internationally renowned artist whose work could connect with the history and identity of Mirafiori. They chose Mike Nelson, who then selected both the site and the subject of his work.
Mike Nelson was born in 1967 and lives and works in London. He represented Britain at the Venice Biennale in 2011 and was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2001 and 2007.
✦ Days of events for the whole city
The inauguration was part of a programme of events in Mirafiori and in the city centre. It included a workshop with local middle school students and a public conversation between Mike Nelson and Francesco Manacorda, director of the Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art, at the Accademia Albertina.
✦ Why it matters for ClimaGen
ClimaGen works on urban greening and renaturing in vulnerable neighbourhoods, and Mirafiori Sud is our pilot area in Torino. The Sangone river and its green spaces are an important part of the neighbourhood’s future. IDOLO invites residents and visitors to come down to the river and see it with new eyes, as a place where the industrial past and the natural landscape meet.
As the river slowly washes the gold away, the work also reminds us that the river is alive and keeps changing. The river was also at the centre of the River Landscape Festival in Mirafiori Sud in September 2026.
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