Michelangelo Pistoletto’s screen takeover is dedicated to Preventive Peace, featuring his new public work, Three Mirrors, which positions art as a form of civic action. Created in partnership with United Nations OCHA during the 87 million life-saving appeal, the project includes a series of 12 hand-signed editions that directly support humanitarian, public, and educational programmes

Having launched on 1 April across global screens with Three Mirrors, a new public work that positions Preventive Peace as a shared civic responsibility, the project aligns with OCHA’s 2026 humanitarian appeal to reach 87 million people affected by crises worldwide.

Running from April to October 2026, the collaboration will broadcast daily at 20:26 (local time) across London’s Piccadilly Lights and CIRCA’s international network of screens in Milan, Rome, Los Angeles, Accra, Abidjan, Casablanca, Hong Kong, and Seoul. The collaboration will also extend into a series of twelve mirrored editions, with 20% of net proceeds being allocated across CIRCA and the Pistoletto Cittadellarte Foundation’s public and educational programmes, including a donation to the United Nations Global Emergency Response Fund (CERF). At a moment when peace demands renewed imagination and responsibility, these interconnected elements translate Michelangelo Pistoletto’s thinking into public, collectable and participatory forms.

Pistoletto, nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2025, said, “With my Mirror Paintings, the image is no longer closed within the artwork. It opens itself to reality and to the present moment. Through my collaboration with CIRCA, this reflection becomes collective: the city, its inhabitants and the passing of time enter the work, transforming the mirror into a shared space of awareness and responsibility”. 

THREE MIRRORS (2026)

Curated by Josef O’Connor, the collaboration launches 1 April with a new triptych of virtual mirror works titled Three Mirrors (2026), filmed in Biella, Italy, at Cittadellarte, the foundation Pistoletto 2 established as a permanent laboratory for social transformation. In the trilogy, Pistoletto draws directly onto three large sheets of mirror, articulating three movements within his enduring concept of The Third Paradise. Across Third Paradise, Formula of Creation, and Statodellarte, the Third Paradise unfolds as cosmology, relationship, and civic practice.

Presented throughout April, May and June 2026 across some of the world’s most visible public screens at 20:26 (local time) daily, the works operate as lectures without walls. Addressed to society rather than to a traditional art audience, the mirror becomes a civic surface through which ideas are transmitted, tested, and shared in real time.

Widely recognised as one of the most significant artists to emerge from postwar Europe and a central figure of the Arte Povera movement, Pistoletto has spent more than six decades dissolving the boundary between art and life. His mirror works incorporate time, environment, and the presence of the viewer, forming what he has described as a self portrait of the world. At 92, this project is neither retrospective nor commemorative. It is instructional. “The more freedom we claim, the more responsibility we carry,” Pistoletto said. “Peace does not arrive by chance. It has to be produced”. 

Across Three Mirrors, the renewed urgency of Pistoletto’s thinking unfolds as a visionary reflection on our time, where the symbol of The Third Paradise calls for a new balance between nature and artificiality in an era shaped by climate crisis and artificial intelligence: Third Paradise establishes the symbolic framework. Two opposing circles are joined by a third central space, proposing a passage toward a new stage of humanity in which apparent opposites do not cancel one another but generate equilibrium.

Formula of Creation articulates the generative principle within that symbol: 1+1=3. From the meeting of two forces emerges a third element. The encounter between “I” and “You” produces “We” transforming duality into relationship and shared responsibility. Statodellarte extends this logic into civic life, proposing creativity as a form of citizenship in which freedom is inseparable from responsibility and art becomes an active condition of society.

UNITED NATIONS PARTNERSHIP

The collaboration is presented in partnership with OCHA at a pivotal moment. Earlier this year, the United Nations announced a campaign to save 87 million people facing the most life-threatening conditions worldwide, giving governments 87 days to mobilise funding and diplomatic action. Presented across major public screens worldwide, CIRCA enters this next phase as a cultural amplification of that call. By transforming some of the world’s most visible urban spaces into sites of collective action and reflection, the project with Michelangelo Pistoletto reinforces the urgency of energetic peacemaking and global solidarity over indifference. Tom Fletcher, United Nations Relief Chief, said, “2026 must be the year the world chooses solidarity over indifference – peace over war. The lives of 87 million people hang in the balance. Art can challenge complacency and remind us of our shared responsibility. That is why partnerships like this one with Michelangelo Pistoletto and CIRCA matter. At a time of brutal conflicts and shrinking resources, this collaboration is a call to conscience.”

Josef O’Connor, Founder and Artistic Director of CIRCA, said, “This is the most ambitious collaboration CIRCA has undertaken. Working with Michelangelo Pistoletto and Cittadellarte across an entire year, in partnership with the United Nations, allows us to articulate a single proposition. Art as a shared responsibility. Art as a living idea. Art as an active contribution to peace.”

PREVENTIVE PEACE FLAGS

Alongside the public presentation of Three Mirrors, CIRCA and Pistoletto Cittadellarte Foundation will release a series of twelve new mirrored works titled Preventive Peace Flags, conceived as a distributed extension of the project’s central ideas.

Centred on the Third Paradise symbol, the twelve variations are screen printed on polished stainless steel mirror and hand signed by the artist, with each flag featuring two distinct colours at either end of the iconic trinamic form. These colours meet within the central circle, generating a third colour at its core, making visible Pistoletto’s long held formula: 1+1=3

More than editions, the flags operate as portable civic devices. Their reflective surface incorporates the viewer and surrounding environment, extending the logic of the Mirror Paintings into everyday space. In doing so, they transform a symbol of balance into a shared act of participation. “The Third Paradise proposes that apparent opposites do not cancel one another. They create a new balanced condition” Pistoletto says. “In these flags, the mirror makes each person part of that equation, and therefore part of the responsibility it carries”.

20% of net proceeds will be allocated across CIRCA and The Pistoletto Cittadellarte Foundation’s public and educational programmes, including a donation to the United Nations Global Emergency Response Fund (CERF).